This is a real curate's egg of a book. Some parts are awe-inspiringly
well written, while other parts are frustratingly bad. It's clear that
the author can write, in the sense of being able to craft a well-honed
sentence. His ability to create compelling characters or describe his
world thoroughly or simply tell a story that absorbs and mesmerises -
these are in greater doubt.
The book opens well, with a vividly
drawn event which surprises on many levels without being confusing. So
far so good. In fact, for several chapters things go very smoothly, and I
began to harbour high hopes that this would turn out to be one of those
unsung gems, a little treasure unknown and unappreciated by the world
at large. But then things began to go awry. The author has a penchant
for spookiness that verges on horror, and this works pretty well in
small doses, generating a nicely creepy atmosphere. However, it soon
becomes clear that much of this spookiness is simply a means of
concealing useful information. All too often, a conversation with a
character who knows what's going on is so cryptic that nothing is
revealed. Characters are told lies or nothing at all, are told to obey
without question, are given arm-waving vagueness - it had me screaming
with frustration. I get that authors love to withhold details for that
big last-minute reveal, but readers do need some information dribbled
out to them to keep them interested.
Then there are the
characters. The story is told through three main point of view
characters. Landros is an indifferent guard watching nothing very much
(it seems) in a small town in a remote location. Ysola is an abused wife
(yes, that old cliche) now returning to her home village which is
mysteriously different from her memories. Marin is an aging warrior but
despite that hackneyed description, he's still the most interesting of
the three, for reasons I'll get to. To start with the three seem to be
completely separate, and this gives the early parts of the story a
disjointed air.
The world-building is intriguing. Several
thousand years earlier, during a time of kings described as 'lustful',
the nine gods decided to get rid of them and there was a war during
which the kings were defeated, four of the gods were killed (curious but
unexplained) and a Nameless One was also defeated. Since then, the
remaining five gods have controlled a docile human population by
'calling' individuals to do certain things. An individual dreams of
meeting one of the gods, who instructs them to take up a particular
profession or (in Landros's case) to be promoted to Captain. This
immediately raises the question: what happens if the individual refuses?
It is Marin who answers it: he has been tortured by the vengeful god
every night as he sleeps because he refused. What nasty gods.
But
somehow, this interesting background never blossoms into a compelling
story. The real problem, for me, was that the main characters are all
completely passive. Things happen to them and around them and
(sometimes) because of them, but they drift through all this like
lifeless dolls, making no decisions, taking no action on their own
account, simply being manipulated by events and by other people, without
any overt sign of rational thought. When things happen, they fail to
react in realistic ways. Sometimes they don’t respond at all. It’s as if
they are merely observers at a play, walking around on the stage but
simply glorified members of the audience. I’m not a big fan of the
get-up-and-go all-action style of protagonist, but I do like a main
character to be awake while the plot is unrolling on all sides.
Once
I got past the halfway point, it became clear that, while the author
may know perfectly well where the plot is going and why, I still didn’t
have a clue. I struggled to the 60% point before giving up. I didn’t
care about any of the characters, and the only remotely interesting one,
Marin, had his most intriguing aspect entirely negated by something
that happens to him (which I won’t give away, because it’s a bit of a
shocker). The book lacked focus, and in places rambled and repeated
itself. It could also have done with a thorough final edit to weed out
innumerable small but irritating errors in punctuation and a few
spelling and grammar typos.
This was a disappointing read. The
underlying ideas are excellent, and the author displays a fine writing
style much of the time. For those who like their fantasy deeply
mysterious, and infused with a thick layer of horror, I can recommend
this. Sadly, it just didn’t work for me. One star for a DNF.
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