110
Followers
80
Following
Allusion is not Illusion
You'll pry my books off my cold, dead body. By the time you shift them all I'll be flat and dessicated.
Currently reading
Winter's Tales
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Already Dead
The Rings of Saturn
Lady Audley's Secret
Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became "People" - And How You Can Fight Back
The City, Not Long After
You Can Sketch: A Step-by-Step Guide for Absolute Beginners
Lonely Werewolf Girl
I wanted to like this more, not only because I usually find Huff enjoyable even when she isn't good, but because I was excited to see a fantasy novel head in an original direction. In this story a ship sets out to explore uncharted ocean distances, is wrecked, and leaves one survivor prisoner in a previously unknown land, very loosely based on pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. The survivor, Benedikt, is a Bard, able to control the element of water through music. His captors have no familiarity with this magic and a power struggle to control Benedikt develops between two rulers. Every now and then we flash back across the seas to the kingdom of Shkoder where the queen and various other characters from earlier books in the series are worrying about what happened to the voyagers.Sadly, the book is pretty much all-Benedikt all the time, and Benedikt is a whiny, self-absorbed pity-party. Even before this disastrous shipwreck, he has spent his entire life feeling sorry for himself because, although he is handsome and talented, he cannot sing Air like most Bards, who use this element to communicate over long distances. The excuses for choosing Benedikt as the Bard despite this lack for the voyage are pretty weak, but obviously this is a necessary plot device as otherwise he could easily send for help. Even though I felt sorry for his suffering I did not like Benedikt and was soon bored with his self-pity.
The book also had an unnecessary and super-weak romantic subplot pairing Benedikt with Bannon, a major character from No Quarter. Since the two hardly know each other and have no interaction throughout the book, this seemed pointless as well as not in keeping with the personality already developed for Bannon, who hardly seemed like someone who would have patience for self-pity (unless it were his own). The only thing in favor of this plot point was that it kept the bulk of the book romance free.