And now for something completely different... or at least, new to me.
Estin, the hero of this book, is a wildling, a kind of humanoid animal,
one of whole variety of such animals superficially resembling actual
animals (fox, bear, ferret, etc) but able to speak and act in many ways
like humans. They live in packs in the woods, but their lifestyle is not
unlike a kind of technology-free human existence. It's an uneasy
juxtaposition. Estin has an enhanced sense of smell, he has fur, he
climbs well with clawed paws, yet he walks on two legs most of the time,
he talks and thinks and in many ways behaves in very unanimal-like
ways. The wildlings are not anthropomorphised animals, they're a
hard-to-define mixture of human and animal. I'm not sure whether I like
it.
The story opens in a very traditional way. Estin was orphaned
at a young age, his family slaughtered before his eyes, and since then
he's scratched a precarious living stealing and scavenging on the city
streets, and avoiding being captured by slavers. He's asked to undertake
a difficult mission to settle some debts. So far, so very dull. But his
accomplice is a gypsy girl with an agenda of her own and during the
mission Estin encounters Feanne, another wilding, and the first he's
seen in the city who isn't a slave. They escape together and Feanne
takes Estin back to meet her rather bizarre pack.
None of this is
original in plot terms. The orphan finding out about himself and his
heritage is a trope almost as old as the genre. There's always room for a
new spin on things, though, and the author's inventiveness is
exemplary. The wildlings themselves are original enough to leave plenty
of scope for revealing new and intriguing twists. The wildlings based on
predators don't get along terribly well with the wildlings based on
prey animals, for instance.
The use of magic is a bit random. It
seems that they can do whatever the plot needs them to do. If there was
any logical system to it, I never found it. The healing power is
particularly convenient. An injured good guy can be healed almost
without constraint (there are a few limitations, but not many). Even
when dead, they can be coaxed back to life by healing their injuries and
then cajoling the detached spirit back into the body (which doesn't
always work, since the spirit has a mind of its own). Eventually the
healer will get tired, but a lot of healing can be done before the
batteries are flat (so to speak).
One aspect the author did
rather well was the way different characters spoke in different ways.
The gypsy girl had a very strong accent, and Soren the ferret-like
character has a kind of speech which bounces uncontrollably just like he
does. Then there is Finth the dwarf, who (again traditionally) fulfils
the role of plucky comic relief. Humour is always welcome in a long,
battle-heavy work of fantasy, but some of Finth's joke were a little too
modern for my taste - I have difficulty suspending disbelief when a
dwarf talks about rugrats, for instance.
The characters are
quite nicely drawn. Even if they never quite came alive for me (the
human/animal thing mentioned above) there was a lot of depth to many of
the characters which I appreciated. There was also some interesting
philosophy in there, between battles or skin-of-the-teeth escapes,
especially between the various races (or species, I suppose). Estin
himself isn't quite as riveting as he might be - again, he falls square
into the traditional line of little person who becomes central to the
plot. He isn't quite the long lost heir to the kingdom, but he does
acquire a lot of abilities - warrior skills and magic - in a very short
time. He's also way too restrained and honourable for my taste. I like a
hero who has a few human (or wilding) weaknesses. Feanne, the complex
and driven fox-type character, is, to my mind, far more interesting.
Although she’s unstable and overly aggressive, with a tendency to fight
to the death first and then (possibly, if she feels like it) ask
questions later, this makes a refreshing change from subservient or the
typical sort of warrior babe. I was disappointed when such a strong
character fell apart emotionally half way through the book.
One
grumble. Estin knows nothing of his heritage because he was orphaned
(obviously). This means that he transgresses in some way or other every
few pages, just from not knowing the rules. Yet no one ever seems to
make allowance for him, or to explain properly what he's done wrong.
It's all "Oh no, you shouldn't have done that!" and then maybe some
pretty nasty repercussions. His training in the wildling group is all
pretty cryptic too, so that when someone turns on him, he's not sure
whether it's a genuine problem or a test of some sort. He is very
patient about all this, but I would be seriously ticked off about these
repeated tests and the lack of clear-cut explanations.
A minor
grumble. There are quite a lot of little typos and such-like - 'taught'
instead of 'taut', for example - and odd words missing or misplaced,
which mar an otherwise professional piece of work. However, I've had the
book sitting on my Kindle for over a year, however, so it's possible
these have now been tidied up. There is a certain sloppiness in the
writing, however, which only a ruthless rewrite would eliminate.
After
the midpoint, the book becomes quite episodic, jumping from one
situation to another unpredictably and abruptly. While I like to be
surprised, this was a little too choppy for my taste. It also ran into
the typical problem of the nobody-to-hero trajectory: Estin becomes very
powerful, especially in his magic, and that becomes a bit of a
get-out-of-jail-free card in numerous situations. I also disliked what I
can only describe as a lot of soppiness over the children, and a great
deal of artificially generated tension between Estin and Feanne. In
fact, much of the later part of the book felt rather contrived, as if,
having got the characters to a certain logical point within this book,
the author needed to rearrange everything ready for the next volume.
Either that or the author had a quota for fight scenes. Some of this is
inevitable, but it felt to me very drawn out and stretched beyond
sensible limits. A little tightening up here, eliminating the in-camp
arguments altogether (oh no, not another leadership challenge...), and
perhaps reducing the number of hooray-we’ve-escaped-oh-no-we-haven’t
moments, would have been a great improvement.
This is an unusual
and readable story, well written bar a few quirks. For those who enjoy
action, there’s plenty here, with an array of traditional fantasy races
(even halflings! don’t see many of those nowadays), as well as the
wildlings, a whole zombie army, fae, dragons, elemental spirits of some
sort and a really creepy mist thing. The magic is a pretty mixed bag,
too. The ending lost the plot a little, with one melodramatic moment
after another, without a respite or much detectable logic. There’s some
depth to both world and characters, and the themes of family, race and
slavery were well made, if a little heavy-handed. I found the mixing of
animal and human characteristics problematic, it just didn't work for
me. I'm equally happy with human or non-human characters in a book, but I
found this to be an uneasy blend of the two. That's a personal
preference, no more than that, and in other respects the book is
excellent, but I can't give it more than three stars.
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