It's never fun giving an 'C' review. If you utterly love a book, the review flows from you in a rapture. If you despise a book it can bring out invective that is as much fun to read as the book was not. But with the middle of the road reviews...that's tricky.
Let me start off with some caveats. I've met Sam Sykes. I like him and I'm going to read the next book in his Aeon's gate series. Sam is a young writer but a serious one, no matter what his twitter feed is like. He's also well-read in the Fantasy genre. He even has one of his characters, almost meta-texually, complain about "...now we're just sitting around in furs, talking instead of killing people."
So, that's a good review tag: Too much sitting around, not enough killing.
It's a touch trick. Sam Sykes clearly wanted to develop his characters more in this follow up to his action-packed debut, Tome of the Undergates. However it comes at the expense of plot and movement. Character revealed through action works better than sitting around and talking.
I will say this: if you can get through the first 120 pages, things do pick up.
Pros:
When the action happens, it is intense and gory and sure to please fans of the first book. Sam also has a knack for some very beautiful and insightful prose. He's at his best when he's musing upon the philosophy of violence, the nature of faith and how emotional pain can be greater than any physical injury. Inventive monsters, races and an interesting world.
Gariath has the most complete character arc, seemingly coming out of his death wish, though it along with a number of complications are resolved a little too abruptly. The shict, Kataria,starts off with the apparent intention of killing her human companions, including Lenk, as a way of reconnecting to her heritage. This is a wonderful opportunity for tension that gets resolved way too early. Denaos comes off the best with his back history becoming more and more fascination. I'd much rather read a book with him as the main character. (In fact, I'd pay real money to read that book, Sam) Dreadaeleon begins to suffer the aftereffects of too much magic use in ways that are hilarious and painful. Asper has some angsty crises of faith and nearly gets raped. Lenk...well, Lenk gets a bit more back history that makes him sound a bit less crazy and he does reach out to Kataria but ends up getting betrayed and abandoned in a big way.
Let me start off with some caveats. I've met Sam Sykes. I like him and I'm going to read the next book in his Aeon's gate series. Sam is a young writer but a serious one, no matter what his twitter feed is like. He's also well-read in the Fantasy genre. He even has one of his characters, almost meta-texually, complain about "...now we're just sitting around in furs, talking instead of killing people."
So, that's a good review tag: Too much sitting around, not enough killing.
It's a touch trick. Sam Sykes clearly wanted to develop his characters more in this follow up to his action-packed debut, Tome of the Undergates. However it comes at the expense of plot and movement. Character revealed through action works better than sitting around and talking.
I will say this: if you can get through the first 120 pages, things do pick up.
Pros:
When the action happens, it is intense and gory and sure to please fans of the first book. Sam also has a knack for some very beautiful and insightful prose. He's at his best when he's musing upon the philosophy of violence, the nature of faith and how emotional pain can be greater than any physical injury. Inventive monsters, races and an interesting world.
Cons:
Weak plot, main characters apparently are made of super-rubber, too much emo angsty talking about feelings, some unfortunate figurative and literal Deus Ex Machina at work.
Ok, plot: After the events of Tome of the Undergates the protagonists find themselves adrift and lost with a titanic ass with a deathwish in the prow of the boat. The latter refers to the dragonman, Gariath. Gariath wants to die but apparently doesn't care to do it the easy way by just going over the side. Instead he attacks a sea monster with the broken shaft of the boat's mast, causing the boat to be destroyed. This separates the group and maroons them on an island populated with oversized cockroaches and a couple of races of lizard men. A great deal of angst ensues. Relationships are somewhat mended or complicated, the macguffin, the namesake Tome of the first book is read, lost, found and given to one of the books Big Bad Guys only to be lost in yet another ship's destruction. Attempts to quit adventuring, at least the mental intention to, and attempts at heroism are unrewarded, leaving the main protagonist, Lenk feeling betrayed. The titular Black Halo is briefly seen but is barely touched on. Also flying around the story is a Librarian, Bralston, who might be the most likable character of the series so far. However his contribution seems to be mostly a deus ex magica.
Ok, plot: After the events of Tome of the Undergates the protagonists find themselves adrift and lost with a titanic ass with a deathwish in the prow of the boat. The latter refers to the dragonman, Gariath. Gariath wants to die but apparently doesn't care to do it the easy way by just going over the side. Instead he attacks a sea monster with the broken shaft of the boat's mast, causing the boat to be destroyed. This separates the group and maroons them on an island populated with oversized cockroaches and a couple of races of lizard men. A great deal of angst ensues. Relationships are somewhat mended or complicated, the macguffin, the namesake Tome of the first book is read, lost, found and given to one of the books Big Bad Guys only to be lost in yet another ship's destruction. Attempts to quit adventuring, at least the mental intention to, and attempts at heroism are unrewarded, leaving the main protagonist, Lenk feeling betrayed. The titular Black Halo is briefly seen but is barely touched on. Also flying around the story is a Librarian, Bralston, who might be the most likable character of the series so far. However his contribution seems to be mostly a deus ex magica.
Gariath has the most complete character arc, seemingly coming out of his death wish, though it along with a number of complications are resolved a little too abruptly. The shict, Kataria,starts off with the apparent intention of killing her human companions, including Lenk, as a way of reconnecting to her heritage. This is a wonderful opportunity for tension that gets resolved way too early. Denaos comes off the best with his back history becoming more and more fascination. I'd much rather read a book with him as the main character. (In fact, I'd pay real money to read that book, Sam) Dreadaeleon begins to suffer the aftereffects of too much magic use in ways that are hilarious and painful. Asper has some angsty crises of faith and nearly gets raped. Lenk...well, Lenk gets a bit more back history that makes him sound a bit less crazy and he does reach out to Kataria but ends up getting betrayed and abandoned in a big way.
This was not the follow up I was hoping for. So what went wrong? I think splitting up the main characters was a mistake. It allowed Sam to set up the internal struggles for each character and it served to build his world/setting. However it was death to plot movement. There was too much sitting around. The main characters were in motion in the first book, they had a goal. For far, far too much of this book, the main character don't have a goal. They don't want anything. They don't try to do anything. It isn't until Asper and Kataria's abduction that the characters actively did anything. The characters weren't the main actors in this story, the antagonists were but too much of their actions were unconnected to the protagonists. It's like a James Bond movie where Bond spends 75% of the movie in Maui, getting a tan and squabbling with surfers while Blofeld is in Mongolia, setting his plans in motion and paying Bond no mind at all.
Speaking of Bond villains, there are a number of egregious examples of inexplicable and convenient villain stupidity. Hell, Lenk is dying, at the mercy of the fish goddess/Deep One and gets returned to shore with a 'leave me alone and I'll leave you alone' speech. that makes no sense. Time and again, a huge, unbeatable opponent appears: a sea monster, a mage of unspeakable power, an Old One and each time the conflict is resolved too conveniently. Bralston literally flies out of nowhere to land on this one ship in the ocean just in time to fight against the aforementioned mage of unspeakable power.
Also, the main characters get beaten and cut and just generally messed up in ways that are never serious or permanent. They just get up again and keep going. That may make sense for Gariath but for the regular humans, it doesn't makes sense. If someone weighting three hundred pounds with what seems like iron-hard skin and bones hits you, it should be breaking bones. Instead, the main characters bounce back. As a result, I don't feel a lot of tension when they get into trouble.
What did I like? I like the way Lenk and Kataria's relationship actually took a few steps forward. I loved when she stood up and protected her. I loved when Lenk went charging off to rescue her and Asper. I liked Bralston, though he was more interesting when seen through other's eyes, for some reason. I liked a lot of the supporting characters, Sam writes them very real and very human (even when they aren't human). The lizard king, the priest in the town, even the purple Amazons caught my interest and made me care about them.
I really wanted to love this book. But I didn't. I didn't hate it, I plan to read the next book in the series but I think we see a sophomore slump here. Here's the Junior year being awesome as the Freshman year was.
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