I read this quite awhile ago now. Probably about two months ago. I can still remember a fair bit about it though, which means it must’ve been pretty good. Or at least memorable. (And fortunately I did cheat and write a small review of it on Goodreads, so that refreshed my memory.)
The plot doesn’t fit into a typical kind of plot. It’s not a quest. It’s not coming of age. It’s not any one thing I can particularly point to. Basically Yeine is summoned the kingdom/city/palace of Sky by her grandfather. He names her an heir, but she’s not the only one. So she’s in competition with her cousins, neither of whom are very nice people. And it turns out her family, the ruling family, has some gods locked up and kept as slaves.
It’s the characters that really sell this book. I can like and admire Yeine. The dark god Nahadoth is pretty darned cool. And the child god Sieh is just lovable and awesome. They are people (gods) that I want to get to know more about and spend more time with. Which is a good thing, because this is a trilogy!
It’s kind of hard for me to say there are anime influences. Because I really feel that there are.. but other than Sieh playing with his balls, I can’t quite put my finger on what. And I wonder if there aren’t subtler anime-ish things in here that I’m picking up on subconsciously and that’s making me like the book even more than I consciously think I do.
Um.. yea. So, kind of hard to tell you what the book’s about, but some of the characters are worth getting to know.
There was one part that confused me somewhat. And this may be a bit of a spoiler, so look away now.
Yeine has this erotic moment with a god and then later he’s like ‘no, I can’t, it’ll be bad, and destroy you/the world, whatever’. And I’m like.. didn’t you already? So there was some distinction there that wasn’t immediately obvious to me while reading it. Which after the fact I can only think means he’s got more self-control than a certain vampire who can’t even a kiss a girl without wanting to chomp on her.
I join others in waiting for book 2!
The Plot
After the death of her mother, Yeine is summoned to the capital of the world, the city of Sky where her grandfather rules. She finds herself installed as his heir — one of several who might inherit his position — and thrown into a situation where the politics only get murkier the more she finds out. She attempts to stay alive while she pursues her own agenda, to find out who murdered her mother.
My Thoughts
I’ve spent the past few days (weeks) trying to come up with a coherent sort of review. I know that I liked and enjoyed the book, but my thoughts beyond that are sort of a jumble, and I’m afraid as a result that this is unlikely to be a very flowing review. When I dislike a book it’s usually easy for me to pinpoint the main reasons why. But when I like a book, it tends to leave a more generalised impression of pleasure.
Good Idea:
The author didn’t feel the need to dumb anything down for the reader. There were no info-dumps: we learned about the world through organic revelations. By the end we’d learned just exactly enough to make this part of the trilogy make sense and very little more.
Bad Idea:
Though the ending clearly sets up the next book (and the excerpt obviously does the job even better than that) this book had enough of a satisfying conclusion that I’m not burning to read the next one. This is good since it doesn’t come out for months, but the lack of urgency might be a bad thing.
Good Idea:
The setting (what we’ve seen of it so far) is engaging. There are nations/countries/cultures where the differences are more than cosmetic and yet it feels that thought has been given to each so that it makes sense. I was not left with the nagging feeling that I’d better not think too hard about the fabric of this universe, lest it dissolve.
Good Idea:
All the way back to my early obsession with Greek and Roman mythology, I have always loved stories where the gods walk among humans and interact with them; where the gods have weaknesses and personality beyond ‘supreme being’ or even just ‘vengeful dick’. This one hits all of those buttons and then some.
Not Sure:
There’s an undercurrent in the book about the fluidity of the gods: their appearences change depending on their whim or the situation, their sexuality is not tied to any sort of rigid code, and their morality certainly isn’t either. In the end, it seems like the one thing about them that is fixed is their gender. Which is neither good nor bad, but an interesting choice.
Good Idea:
The novel is told in the first person, as if Yeine, the main character, was explaining her experiences to another. This may be a first novel cliche, but it works here, and the ‘present’ asides were far less intrusive (and non-annoying) than I’ve seen in some stories (*coughPolgaracough*).
Bad Idea:
At certain points (to be spoiler-free and vague), I had trouble figuring out who was speaking and was forced to resort to the annoying practice of counting out lines of dialogue to keep track. This was a stylistic issue which could have been fixed by putting someone’s speech/thoughts into a different font face or style.
I don’t take to new fiction series and authors easily. On my bookshelves I have quite a few books I’ve purchased because the cover or the summary looked interesting, and yet I’ve never quite been able to bring myself to read. (I do the same thing with food and clothes.) I don’t have as much of a problem with non-fiction, oddly enough. Perhaps it’s less personal. It doesn’t touch the imagination as much. I don’t know. But the first hurdle has been achieved with this one: I read it and I enjoyed it. And more, while I was reading it, I was able to lose myself in the story to the point where I had no desire to stop reading.
What it hasn’t managed yet is to elevate itself to an obsession — either for the author or the world — and thus guarantee that I’ll immediately consume the next which comes out. But it’s pretty unusual for an author or a world to do that on a first outing; I’m about the same place here as I was with the first Harry Potter book, and that certainly turned the corner into something more. There’s potential here.
In Short
Once I was reading it, I was eager to keep reading. And I’m definitely interested to see the next book — there was a little preview of it in the end, and I found it intriguing. I can’t say I’ve been totally sucked in by the world yet, but I’m thinking that’s probably because we’ve actually seen very little of the world itself: this book was confined to a very small area with a couple of brief excursions. The second book promises to expand on that.