I'm not at all sure what to make of this book. On the one hand, it has a
lot of elements that I normally find appealing: a post-apocalyptic
setting, a kickass female protagonist, characters with a lot of history,
an unpredictable world. But somehow, it didn't grab me, and I've been
puzzling over why. There's nothing terrible about it, nothing that jumps
out at me - it's well plotted, the characters have depth, the world is
full of surprises (and I love to be surprised!), but for some odd reason
it didn't resonate with me. Just a mood thing, I suppose.
One
problem is that I often found it difficult to visualise the settings.
Sometimes I would have to reread a section because I'd misunderstood
where things were or what was going on. I'm still not very clear whether
the setting is meant to be some real-world place, or if it's a created
world. I kept seeing it in my mind as the southwestern US, but I could
be completely wrong about that. Either way, the book failed to provide
me with as much detail about the backdrop as I wanted, but another
reader likely wouldn't find it a problem.
However, the world is
filled with a whole heap of weirdness. The author has a stunning
imagination to create so many odd beasties and devices and situations.
There was almost too much creativity (and that's not a criticism that's
often levelled at a fantasy work, let's be honest). But perhaps less of
the bizarre and a bit more of the familiar would have helped me get into
it. In some ways, the deluge of originality reminded me of my one
attempt at a China Mièville book. It's not that I dislike weirdness, but
I'm not too keen on the absolutely anything goes end of the spectrum.
The
plot - well, what plot? Malja (the kickass female, who has a wicked
curved blade called Viper) and her mute magician sidekick, Tommy, amble
round the countryside trying to find information about two men who
mistreated Malja, so that she can take her revenge. And that's about it.
Along the way, they have some adventures, make some new friends, Malja
(and Viper) kill a lot of people and mutant beasties, while she tries to
prevent Tommy from killing anyone because killing is a Very Bad Thing.
Now, it's not that any of this is uninteresting, but it's a fairly
delicate thread on which to hang an entire book, and it was all a bit
episodic. It just felt like a series of setpiece battles, interspersed
with odd moments of introspection round the campfire, where Malja muses
on the fact that killing is a Very Bad Thing. Sometimes the musings
jumped about rather abruptly - Malja's childhood with the bad guys, her
childhood with the good guy, her meeting with Tommy, and a few other odd
events in her past - and it wasn't always easy to keep up.
Malja
herself is a fairly standard issue Warrior Babe (tm), basically a
killing machine, and somehow the odd doubts she feels don't quite work
to make her a fully rounded character, at least not for me, although I
did enjoy finding out where she came from, that was a fun reveal. The
author has put a lot of effort into developing Malja - not just her
history, but her feelings for Tommy and her interactions with the other
characters, and if it didn't totally convince me, that's partly a side
effect of her Warrior Babe role. The (almost) invincible warrior,
whether male or female, is not one I find particularly compelling. Tommy
- now, Tommy's interesting, but he would be much more interesting if we
could either hear him speak or get a viewpoint from inside his head,
but failing that he's no more than a blank.
The other characters
are actually rather well-drawn, although in some cases it takes nearly
the whole book to get to the point where we really understand them. This
is partly because they pop in and out of the plot quite a bit, and
partly also because most of them start off as bad guys, and it takes a
while to shift loyalties and see them as good guys (that is, those who
are on Malja's side). But the author deals with that, and their changing
status is reflected in Malja's attitude to them - it takes a long time
for her to trust them.
The magic system is rather nice - each
spell is worked by a single tattoo on the magician's body, and they
prepare the spell by focusing on the tattoo. So spells take time to be
generated, and they also drain the body of energy, making the magician
not just tired but also hungry. Now this is all quite neat. What I
disliked is that there seem to be virtually no limits to the sort of
spells that can be created. Energy fields, heat and light, levitation,
physical changes to the body, creating artifacts, even huge buildings -
all of this and much more can be done, and it has the inevitable result
that in a sticky moment, a new spell will turn up to create a problem
for our heroes or to rescue them. This is just too close to deus ex
machina to be comfortable.
One aspect of magic that was quite
cool was the association with music. The author is obviously a blues
fan, because there's a troop of blues musicians who have a very clever
and original role in the story. I also liked the implications of the
'frames' that play a pivotal role in the plot (I won't say any more,
because I don't want to spoil the surprise). It does mean that in future
books the author has a huge amount of scope to take the story wherever
he wants to go.
The final quarter or so of the book builds to an
action-packed climax. Actually, there's a bundle of action all the way
through (Malja's a Warrior Babe, after all), making the whole book seem
like a loosely connected series of escalating battles, separated by
those introspective moments round the campfire. For those who enjoy lots
of bloody fights against increasingly difficult opponents, this book
will suit you very well. I found myself wondering from time to time just
why they were all doing this (revenge? a flimsy excuse for putting your
life on the line quite so many times). It was also rather convenient
that nobody actually seemed to want to kill Malja. After a humungous
battle, which our heroes survive by the skin of their teeth, the bad
guys invite them into their headquarters and sit down to explain things.
And this happened repeatedly. Either they want Malja dead (in which
case fight to kill and don't talk about it) or else they don't (in which
case, call off the aggressive minions). But maybe I'm looking too hard
for a logical plot in this kind of book.
Now if this sounds quite
negative, this is just how it took me. Maybe on a different day, under
different circumstances, I'd have enjoyed it more. I had to keep
stopping and starting, which was disruptive; on a long journey, where I
could have got really into it, it would have worked better for me. On
the plus side, it's well written, with just a few minor typos, it has
good pacing and plenty of action, as well as an imaginative range of
beasties, which added a degree of unpredictability to every encounter.
The use of magic, both via tattoo or by music, is ingenious, and I like
the idea that the misuse of magic caused the downfall of civilisation,
so that magicians are now both feared and loathed (and often kept in
slavery). The role of magic to provide power (in batteries, for
instance) is a neat idea. The encounters with the remnants of
civilisation were very cool. And I really like the implication that
modern civilisation before the Devastation was driven by very powerful
magic (like electricity, presumably). So although it didn't entirely
work for me, I still enjoyed it. Three stars.
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