Nicolas Rathe, a city guard, must find the children and stop whatever dark plan is being hatched before the city explodes into chaos.

Review:
It took me nearly three years to finish reading Point of Hopes, and two months to write this review after I finally completed it. Those facts should give you a good indication of just how riveting this mystery isnâ€t.

Nicolas Rathe is a “pointsman” (basically a policeman) in the city of Astreiant. When dozens of children suddenly go missing, Rathe is on the case. He enlists a few friends to help—Philip Eslingen, a foreign mercenary to whom Rathe seems to be attracted, and a necromancer buddy from the local university who was, for some reason, played in my head by Paul Bettany. Primarily, Ratheâ€s investigation consists of visiting various parts of the city and talking to people to no avail, until finally a bit of evidence turns up on page 279. The three guys collectively put the pieces together, and I really liked the bits where they were working in concert. Too bad they were only together in the final 70 pages!

Thankfully, the setting of Point of Hopes is more intriguing than its central mystery. For one, gender equality is absolutely the norm. Just as many women as men participate in professions seen as traditionally male in our society, and many women are in positions of power. In the fantasy setting of Astreiant, your occupation is determined by the alignment of the stars at your birth, which reads to me as a metaphor for objectively selecting people for a job based solely on their abilities. Equality of sexual preference is also a facet of life in Astreiant—itâ€s not that same-sex relationships are merely tolerated: theyâ€re commonplace. No one would think of considering them invalid or sinful.

Aside from not being very exciting, the most irritating aspect of Point of Hopes for me was the dire need for better editing. There were many, many, many instances where a comma was used in a spot that needed a semicolon and many pages that suffered from wall o†text syndrome. I canâ€t help but feel like it wouldâ€ve read faster if it werenâ€t so dense-looking. Lastly, I wonder at some of the names. I tend to think characters†names “aloud” in my head, and while this is obviously not a problem for the lead characters, I was stymied by names like “Cijntien.” Plus, itâ€s weird to have fantasy names like that alongside such normal ones.

Anyway, there is a sequel to this entitled Point of Dreams. I own it, so will likely read it someday, but at the rate Iâ€ve gone with this story thus far, I wouldnâ€t expect a review until at least 2015!

Fortunately it got more interesting than that. The dragon is more like an eccentric grandfather than say an intellectual military dragon like Temeraire or a more beast-like military dragon a la Pern or a fighting pit dragon in Jane Yolen’s awesome series. Wait, I’m sensing a fighting trend here. Well, what I mean to say is the dragon is different from some of the more popular dragons out there today (and yesterday). He can even appear to change form, which you don’t see very often.

Ping, the orphan, is okay as a character. She’s a girl, so that’s nice. She’s not dumb, but.. she’s really dumb about this one thing, and that’s the dragon stone. You all know what it is, right? As should anyone who’s ever encountered a dragon in a book before. And since there are dragons in several Harry Potter books, well, then who hasn’t? Yet she’s smart enough to figure out how to barter, though she’s never had money before or been to a market before.

There are some twists and turns and I can’t say I really knew where the story was going at any given moment. So all in all it was a fun read.

At the end is a glossary and a pronunciation guide. Glossaries I don’t mind missing, because I’d rather figure words out from context while reading. However, I would’ve liked the pronunciation guide at the front of the book. I was saying some of the names wrong in my head, and now they’ll always be wrong, because I won’t retain what I learned by reading the guide afterward. I got no practice at think-saying them right.

This book was also a nice change to the previous books, because while it was written by an Australian author, it wasn’t set in Australia. I suppose reading 12 books set in Australia or New Zealand shouldn’t really seem boring. Logically it shouldn’t. I read books set in America all the time. It wouldn’t be too surprising if I had a streak of books set in the UK going on. A lot of Triple Take books are set there. I’d read several manga set in Japan back-to-back without batting an eye. And it’s not like Triple Take books are all I read, so it wouldn’t be 12 books in a row, but.. still it does seem like it’d be monotonous. Too much novelty because I haven’t read many books set in Australia or New Zealand like.. at all, ever?

So, yea, ancient China, I can dig it. It’s a fantasy China, of course, what with the dragons and all.

Likeable characters, unpredictable story, fairly entertaining read, and as a bonus.. dragons!

Oh, and there’s also a rat. If you like that sort of thing. Rats, I mean.

Even though I probably won’t be putting it in my top ten list for books read in 2012, I’d still recommend this book without hesitation.

Ah… but this makes me sad. It would’ve been so good as a stand-alone novel. But we can’t have that these days, can we? Sadly, it’s a series. I see four books listed on her website. I’m not sure if I want to read them or not. The book was nice as it was. Then again, it could be interesting to watch Ping grow up.

Maybe I’ll see if my fellow Triple Takers are interested in reading them or not before I decide.

My Thoughts
First, some background: in the summer of 1996, I was doing an internship at Middlebury College. I didn’t know anyone, and I was feeling particularly antisocial that summer; it was not the best for networking during an internship, but conditions were perfect for consuming vast quantities of books. I spent quite a bit of time at the small bookshop in town, and every time I visited, my eyes were caught by a group of fat novels by Kate Elliott — the Jaran series. I’d pick them up, look at the covers, read the back copy, and then put them back without buying them, though somehow in the back of my mind I always felt that their eventual purchase was inevitable. And soon enough the day came that I could find no other more pressing books to buy, so purchase them I did.

I read them, and I enjoyed them quite a lot (though the later books not quite as much, as focus shifted to characters I cared for less), enough that Elliott was on my watch list as an author whose other books I would probably enjoy.

But for various reasons, though I’ve picked up others of her series, I’ve never actually read them through. Crown of Stars lost me with book 2’s horrific cover. And the giant Eagles of Spirit Gate — for some reason they just didn’t capture my imagination. So by the time the Spiritwalker trilogy’s first installment was released, I wasn’t sure how I would react. However, it passed the cover test, and I very much wanted to like it.

The story begins in the city of Adurnam on the southern coast of Britain. Geography is considerably different in this alternate Earth, but my best guess is that Adurnam is roughly near where Southampton is today. And that will be my last attempt to identify this world with our own, because though I am compelled to try and work out the differences, the differences here are not only vast, they involve a great deal of history with which I’m only marginally familiar. (I point again to the Strange Horizons review which goes further into the alternativeness of the timeline.) Some years ago, much of Europe was in flames as the result of a Napoleanic general, known as Camjiata. He was defeated and imprisoned and society has returned to a more even keel since, though there are hints of discontent stirring (once again?) among the lower classes. Adurnam in this world is a city which boasts a university and a growing industrial base, and is thus a place where the classes are often thrust into contact with one another. The Hassi Barahals, a branch of a larger clan, have a house here in a respectable neighborhood.

From here, the story takes quite a number of twists and turns which I, happily spoiler free, did not always anticipate or see coming. The first segment of the story involves Cat and her cousin Beatrice at the university, giving us an introduction to the way upper middle class society operates. But just when you start to think the plot might center around the school and a mystery surrounding people there, the story shifts: Andevai Diarisso Haranwy appears at the Barahal house, marries Catherine and then spirits her off in a carriage. We then follow them on their travels as they make their way back across the countryside to Four Moons House, where Andevai will report on the success of his mission(s). But just when you start to think the story might center around the journey (both literal and figurative) of two people whose pride prevents them from admitting they find each other attractive, the story shifts: we discover that Andevai has mucked up his assignment thanks to the cleverness of the elder Barahals and Cat’s world is overturned yet again.

There are several more shifts of this nature as the book progresses, and though I was able to predict a few things before they happened (a certain inevitable betrayal springs to mind) the plot remained for the most part delightfully unexpected. By the time we reach our climax and slope down to the point where this story ends, the reader can be both satisfied by the number of revelations made and tantalized by the questions left unanswered. Fortunately for everyone, the second book of the trilogy, Cold Fire, is due to be released in the fall, and Elliott has begun doing the spadework for the third, so at least in publishing time (if not so much in real time) there won’t be much of a wait.

In Short
After enjoying the Jaran books very much, I had been unable to recapture the same level of pleasure with Elliott’s subsequent series — until Cold Magic. This book, the first of a trilogy (… and dare we hope for additional visits to this world afterward? We are already promised a Rory-centric short story.) introduces an alternate Earth where history and climate has gone not quite as it did in our own. Catherine, the point of view character, is learning about the world much as we do while her previously sheltered life is exploded. She is likeable and, more importantly, intriguing, along with her entire supporting cast. I had borrowed this book from the library to read, which I thought a suitable caution after my inability to get into Crown of Stars or Crossroads, but I’ve already ordered a copy for myself and pre-ordered the second, which should say it all.

Right when I started reading volume 5, I was a bit at sea. It had been long enough that I’d forgotten exactly where we were in the story. Though it hadn’t been much longer than a week. I would’ve really loved a recap right at the beginning, which I swear was in volumes 2, 3, and 4. But there was no recap for 5 or 6.

So we’re at a big climax and things are happening in several different places to several different characters. We learn more about the dragon men or dragon tamers or dragons. The bad guys are successful in some things, and are thwarted in others.

Oh, and then one of the good characters has to do something really gross! I wonder if it tasted like chicken or pork.

The manga had a satisfying conclusion. It wasn’t all sweetness and light, of course. The fate of some characters is not, perhaps, what we might have wished. I will spoil insofar as to say.. I totally expected it to end with a wedding. Don’t these things usually end with weddings?

You know, I almost want this to be longer, or in a different form. Maybe a longish anime series, or a prose novel. Just so we could spend more time with the characters and explore little side stories. I feel like they should have had a chance to have more adventures on their quest. They could’ve actually used up the full 2 years allotted to them for one thing!

But, yea, no, it’s good. Not the best manga I’ve ever read. It doesn’t make me squee. But it’s a solid 3.5 or 4 out of 5.

My Thoughts
It’s pretty much impossible to discuss the events of the final two volumes of the series without massive spoilers, so if you’re reading, consider yourself warned.

Volume 5 picks up where volume four ended — the day of the summer solstice, which is to be the day of reckoning for many people. The five candidates for ruler are about as distant from one another as possible — through various means, the dragon men Ceianus and Gaius appear to have been directing each of the candidates to the location of a different “invisible tower” with the promise that there they’ll find the Key to the Kingdom they’ve been seeking.

Asta has already learned that the mysterious “Key” is a fiction created years ago by Sith Master King of the Dragon Tamers Klavis Draconia and his apprentice Darth Dahres. Five underground towers were created, and at the bottom a pool awaits the arrival of a human sacrifice with royal blood. He and Asloan (separately) now learn once all five towers have their proper keys, Draconia expects to acquire ultimate power and domination over the world.

In the meantime, a number of events have been set in motion. Some by Draconia, some by the dragons, and some by other players in the land. Letty and Asloan both escape their towers without becoming keys, foiling the completion of Draconia’s number one plot. Badd, mortally injured in a fight with Draconia, finds himself called to fulfill the promise he made to Gaius earlier on and surrenders his body to the dragons. And Asta, finding himself on the spot when the troops of neighboring Certes decide to take advantage of the chaos in Landor and attempt an invasion, must find it in himself to protect his land and his people.

Since this book really is ultimately about Asta’s growth from a scared and confused little kid into a young man who will be able to take the throne and rule in a reasonable fashion, it’s not surprising that the majority of our time in the last two volumes is spent dealing with his development. We get a little bit of growth from Letty (and none from Asloan, who already started out perfect) but the focus is Astarion and that’s really as it should be.

The ultimate end, which I won’t spoil, is bittersweet, but fitting. My biggest gripe is that the wrap up was unsatisfactory to me — if you’re going to start by giving a timeline of events following these climactic battles, then you darn well ought to include some information about the rest of our named characters. Just concluding the main story isn’t enough when you have all these extra threads hanging out! But I can say the main story did have a solid end that felt like a conclusion rather than just trailing off as some other manga have done.

In Short
I can see that the author completed the story that she wanted to tell — the story of the relationship between Badd and Asta, and the development of Asta into a young man who has confidence in himself and his leadership abilities. She was successful in this, and it was very well done. But I was still a little disappointed that we didn’t get a fuller sketch of Asta’s life and the lives of the other main characters at the end. It was too quickly skimmed over. All the same, the series was definitely better than average.

It occurred to me while reading and watching that Japanese anime and manga won’t be the same again. What’s happened there and is still going on is one of those culture-changing events. I’m sure the anime and manga will still be brilliant, but it’ll be different. Different how, I don’t know. The perspective of time is the only thing that’ll tell us that.

If you want to donate, you know where to do it. But also just take a little time this week to realize/remember how awesome Japan and Japanese creators are.

The Key to the Kingdom is interesting in that it’s a more traditional Western fantasy story. King dies, throne is up for grabs. So the young prince and a bunch of other contenders for the throne go on separate quests to try to find the ‘key to the kingdom’. And, of course, there’s dragons!

Landor is in the middle of a war, which some would term a civil war, to try to unite the neighboring lands that were once part of it. So when the king dies, they rather have to put up a strong front, or their enemies will take advantage. So when the young prince (the older prince and heir also died) says, no way, I don’t want it, they’re all kind of stuck. Not that they really wanted a 13 year old who can’t hold a sword to be king, but you sort of need someone, don’t you? So the council or whatever decides to make it a 2-year quest. Whoever finds the magical, rumored key to the kingdom — as long as they’re of royal blood, of course! — will get to be king. Or queen. And if the two years expires with no one finding it, then the prince will take over. Presumably older and wiser.

This bit I had trouble with. Are those neighboring countries just going to sit back while half the nobility is off gallavanting around? Or wouldn’t they take advantage of the lack of ruler for TWO YEARS and invade and cause general havoc? But no one seems concerned about this.

So Prince Asta sets off with swordsman Baddass and he’s off to go to a place his older brother, the heir apparent, told him to go to. Rather than specifically seeking out the key. Though he stops in at a library and whatnot on the way. And childhood friend and girl is also off having her own adventures and trying to become queen.

And then there’s dragon men. Or dragon tamers. Or dragon speakers. Or actual dragons. It’s all a little confusing. And probably meant to be. These guys are plotting, but are they plotting to help someone find the key? Or to bring down the entire kingdom? Or are both those things the same thing?

I like most of the characters. I also liked that Prince Asta, though people call him a spoiled little prince, is only kind of that. He doesn’t whine his way about the countryside. He’s not naive and ignorant. He just isn’t much for holding a sword and going into battles. And he is only 13!

The end of volume 4 seems to bring us to the point of the climax. I haven’t yet read the final volumes. Hopefully it will all come together satisfactorily.

The artwork is shoujo and pretty. Since it’s a fantasy world, the mangaka can really play with clothing and jewelry and hair and all of that. I wish there were more color pictures.

I have 2 quibbles with the translation. One, it seems the translator was going for the sort of pseudo-British, pseudo-medieval, fantasy-ish kind of language. And I found it distracting, especially at first. I think less would’ve been more in this case. Just a flavor of the language is fine. (Then again, maybe the heavyhandedness of it was present in the original and thus it’s a truer translation.)

I also noticed some copyeditting problems. You know: it’s instead of its. All ready instead of already. Noticed that more in the first two volumes.

One word to CMX: Your promos for other manga in the back? Not doing it for me. I don’t really care if SoandSo is going to hook up with SoandSo in Volume 6 of Manga Y, if I don’t even know what Manga Y is about! I think it would be more effective if you gave a summary of the manga in general, not the specific volume.

I would like to see this as an anime. I think the dragon men in particular would be very pretty in action. And I bet the music would be cool too.

My Thoughts
I had heard good things about this series before we chose to read it, but I didn’t know (and had chosen not to find out) any details, because I wanted to go in without having been spoiled. Having had few expectations, then, it would be a bit silly to say it wasn’t as anticipated — except it wasn’t, a bit.

The world of Thursday Next is an alternate Earth of some kind. Much is similar to our own world, but much more is different. Now, in my past experience with series of books set in an alternate history of Earth, the differences tend to hinge on identifiable differences between that world and ours which have then rippled forward and caused historical divergence. For example, in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire books, the big difference is the existence of dragons and their kin, and this has affected world history in ways which are still being explored. In Jo Walton’s Small Change books, the UK agreed to terms with Nazi Germany and withdrew from WWII before it really got underway, leaving many of the upper classes still able to indulge their fascist sympathies. The setting in Kate Elliott’s Spiritwalker trilogy may be rather too changed to really be called an alternate history, but Strange Horizons has an incredibly in depth analysis of it available for the interested.

So what am I getting at here? Well, in all of the three examples above, the author has thought carefully about the changes they were making and how the ramifications altered the world. While reading, the worlds make internal sense. This was not the case for the setting presented in The Eyre Affair. There are plenty of changes in this alternate Earth, but they don’t seem to hang together well at all. This is a world where time travel is possible and incredibly advanced bioengineering is embarked upon by amateurs at home — and yet their computers still operate with valves and tubes? I’m sorry, what? The technology is out of whack.

There are also lots of clever asides and nudges at history embedded in the text, a number of which I’m sure I didn’t pick up on, being American and well versed in U.S. history rather than British or European. Some were important: the Charge of the Light Brigade has been shifted up a hundred years or so (the war in the Crimea is still going on as the book opens), for instance, and is an important touchstone for the heroine, Thursday Next, as she is a survivor. Others seemed, perhaps, to be setting up for future plot in the ongoing series, but this was less clear.

Part of the problem is that Fforde seems to have fallen victim to the impulse to say too much about the world, far before it was necessary. There’s a reason authors reveal things slowly and only when they need to: first, excess information can bog down the narrative and confuse the reader; second, once you’ve said something, it’s out there and you’re stuck with it — even if you have a better idea of how to handle it in a later book, when you’re actually going to focus in on it. Sure, you can retcon, but that just makes the fans angry.

A secondary result of the information packing (beyond the added confusion and internal contradictions) was that the actual real plot of the book — the danger posed to literature and to the world by Mycroft Next’s Prose Portal — felt like it didn’t ramp up until well past the midpoint of the novel. Once it did get properly underway, the narrative tightened up almost immediately and became far more readable and coherent. Enjoyable, in fact: it was a good idea and an interesting one, and I think it should have been given more pages than it was allotted. The title of the book, after all, is The Eyre Affair, not How Thursday Next Came to Be in Swindon That One Time.

In Short
This book was hampered by the fact that it wanted to be more clever than it actually was. Fforde didn’t seem to decide until halfway through if he was writing a punny Xanth romp or a novel with a plot that was going somewhere; once he settled on the latter, it got better and wrapped up not unsatisfyingly. For anyone who enjoys trying to pick out every sly reference and allusion in a work, this book would be a gold mine. For those who aren’t as enamored of such things, it’s not bad, if you can wade through the confusion of the first half (which is considerable.) Will I seek out the rest of the series? I can’t say I’m chomping at the bit, but I won’t rule it out.

What the heck is this thing?!

Our library has labelled it Mystery. Which most likely means Fforde is typically a mystery writer. Because I can’t say there’s much of a mystery involved in this book, though there is a crime. I guess. Yet I can’t call it an alternate history either. Or science fiction. I would call it fantasy if I had to, but a fantasy reader would typically be disappointed by it. Then again, I can only assume a mystery reader would be completely confused!!

Then again again, I was completely confused!!

Just when you think you’ve got the world and the story figured out, it’d take a 90 or 180 degree turn. And not necessarily in a horizontal direction either. And to label it bizarre might make you think it was bizarre in a cool and interesting fashion. It’s not.

It’s just not.

So the premise? Okay, it’s 1985 for starters. Which normally wouldn’t be a problem for me, but it was just one more thing I had to keep reminding myself of. And it’s the UK. Erm, I think. Well, I guess not, really, since Wales is its own country. But, anyway, something resembling the UK. And it’s an alternate history, in that people are really obsessed with literature. By which is meant classic British literature for the most part, I think. Shakespeare is really big. And there are a couple of really cool points around this part of the premise. Shakespeare animatronic coin-op machines. The original manuscript of Jane Eyre being on display and a page turned every couple of days, so regulars can read it… verrry slowly. I liked that idea. It may even be true. And then there was a Rocky Horror Picture Show version of.. was it Richard III? Very big on audience participation.

So then to add to this premise, there’s a ChronoCorps, which does time travelly-fixy-uppy stuff. The main character’s Dad is one of those guys. And she ends up dabbling in it herself, of course. He tends to retroactively fit things into the time stream. So that bananas were genetically created and then planted back in the past. And things like that.

Do I need to even mention the blimps and the dodos? Probably not. Steampunk and alternative history readers won’t be at all phased by those. And, really, minor point. And nothing to do with anything.

And the bad guy is like immortal or a wizard or something I don’t even.

AND THEN! The main char’s uncle is a crackpot mad scientist, but the lovable sort, you know, and he invents something to let you go into books and change the story. And if you change the story on the original manuscript OHNOES!

 
If this all sounds awesome to you, more power to you, go ahead and read it. If you’re just confused, then, believe me, reading it won’t make you less confused.

Aside from all of that, the story was not, I believe, very well-written. I was halfway through the book and I felt like we were still at the setting-up-the-story phase. Sometimes there’s be odd bits of text that.. well, I thought the main char was also narrating part of it, but how could she know what was going on? She sort of guessed things she wasn’t there for. And then when it came to the big climax, I was confused. Granted my mind was also wandering because I was bored.

And then I can also quibble that in one chapter there were two misuses of the word ‘onto’. And then later on there was the reverse problem with ‘near by’.

As for the characters themselves, I felt the main character was pretty detached from her emotions. Colleagues are killed and she doesn’t seem to really feel anything. She has conversations with a man she claims to love, but they’re all very analytical conversations. She’s even pretty detached and third person narraty when she’s giving a report to her superiors about something that went down. I mean, narraty in a pseudo-literary sort of way, not a detailed-police-report kind of way.

Apparently there are more books about this main character, whose name is Thursday Next, which totally reminds me..

The names in here are stupid! And none more stupid than Jack Schitt.

Before I close, I probably shouldn’t neglect the Crimean War. Which is still going on. But I know nothing about the real Crimean War. Except there was one. So. Yea.

In summation, not the worst thing I’ve ever read, but possibly the most uneven hodgepodge thing I’ve ever read. And I will not be reading another thing about Thursday Next. And probably not another Jasper Fforde either.

My Thoughts
After the death of his father and his brother, Prince Astarion, the next heir to the throne, refuses to take over or to allow a regency to be established in his name (he’s 12 or 13 as the story opens.) Rather than settle immediately upon another claimant and possibly spark a civil war, the King’s council wisely decides to organize a sort of contest: all eligible parties (aka those with some sort of blood claim to the throne, however distant) may undertake a quest for the artifact known as the “Key to the Kingdom”. Anyone who finds it within two years will win the kingdom. If no one finds it within the time frame, then the throne will revert to Prince Astarion whether he likes it or not.

Asta finds himself among the candidates, however reluctantly, and he sets off with his brother’s friend Baddorius to see if he can figure out just what this mysterious item actually is. The reader follows their progress, with intermittant updates on Letty (the only female candidate, and Asta’s friend/crush) and later Asloan Fairheart, candidate number 5.

With all of these characters and quite a few mysteries set up, I admit to feeling some concern: this is, after all, only a six volume series, and while 1000-ish pages is quite a decent length for a plain old prose trilogy, it’s actually not a whole lot of manga real estate in which to tell a complex story.

But we get right into the thick of things: the first couple of volumes serve very well to introduce the main characters and the present situation. And once the reader has a handle on the basic setting, the author wastes no time in delving into the history of the kingdoms and revealing quite a bit more about what’s actually going on.

It becomes clear very early on that the day of the summer solstice is going to be key, and the various players spend a span of several months getting into place for what will happen on that date. Volume four comes to a close as that day is dawning, leaving the reader to anticipate what’s going to happen next.

Thus far, the series has impressed me with its pacing. Not only has mangaka Kyoko Shitou resisted the temptation to overly complicate her plot, she’s also doling out important information a little bit at a time, rather than trying to keep it all until the end. I really feel like there’s enough time left for the major points to be resolved, and resolved well.

The characterization has also been good — in fact, I like Asta a lot more than I thought I was going to at the start, and I’ve been extremely pleased by the lack of stupidity shown by quite a lot of the characters. For the most part they seem like alert people who aren’t likely to fall prey to annoying plots like not passing on a vital bit of information for no good reason, or drawing entirely the wrong conclusion about something and acting a fool as a result.

Hopefully the final two volumes will continue these positive trends and bring us to a satisfactory conclusion of the story.

In Short
Mangaka Kyoko Shitou has created an imaginitive pseudo-medieval setting for her fantasy manga The Key to the Kingdom. The first two-thirds of the series is spent setting up the principle players and maneuvering them into place for the climax to come in the final two volumes. It does its job: enough is revealed to the reader to make one interested in the fates of the characters and the ultimate answers to the mysteries not yet solved.

My Thoughts
Somehow, even though I’m the one in charge of creating the “Upcoming” page on Tripletake, I had not actually read the blurb I pasted in for this book. The result being that my impressions of the book, formed from only its title, were completely wrong. It was nothing like what I expected (which was, of course, relatively high fantasy centering around a land called Alavna).

We begin instead in Hastings (as in Battle of) where Ursula and Dan, unwilling partners on a school field trip, have found themselves in the middle of a clinging yellow mist. Dan is a smart, athletic, popular kid while Ursula is apparently an outcast who has low self-esteem due to her height (tall) and build (heavy). These facts turn out to be rather less important than one might expect in a young adult novel. The point of view shifts between Ursula and Dan throughout the whole book, but it’s most noticeable here at the beginning, where we’re most in their heads. Dan’s point of view is presented in short, nearly clauseless sentences, while Ursula’s sentence structure is more complex. It was an interesting contrast but for me, it made reading Dan’s sections difficult. It felt like the equivalent of being in heavy traffic — you’d move for a couple seconds and then jerk to a stop again. Repeat.

Ursula and Dan emerge from the mist into somewhere different — a land which might be Britain of the distant past or might not. In any case, the situation there is much the same as the situation in Britain during the middle of the Roman occupation. The Celtic tribes are finding their way of life threatened, their lands taken, their authority usurped; in desperation, they’ve been trying to use magic to lift the Veil and summon help from elsewhere. What they got was Ursula and Dan, who don’t feel especially useful.

Of course, the reader knows this will turn out not to be the case: they will obviously hold the key to solving the tribes’ problems, at least in the short term. It wouldn’t be much of a story, otherwise. Dan’s ‘talent’ is revealed fairly early on in the story: he’s what the tribes call a ‘bear sark’, aka a berserker in the grandest tradition of the word. He can turn into an unstoppable killing machine in a disturbingly easy way (disturbing to himself perhaps more than the reader) and go Hitokiri Battousai on all the bad-guys.

Ursula’s purpose is developed more slowly, and it’s she more than Dan who ends up as the central figure of the book. The Celts who summon her and Dan mistake her initially for a boy and this ruse is continued for a very large part of the book. Though it strains credulity for portions of the beginning, it’s a necessary ploy to keep her involved with the male warriors who making the decisions for the tribes. While there’s some lip service paid to the idea that the Celts were a relatively equal society whose womenfolk are known to fight alongside the men, we never see this in practice and the men all seem content enough with the patriarchy, new or not.

The plotting is well-paced; there are no sections of the book where there are too many incidents and others where there are too few. The final battle in particular was impressive, conveying as it did the hectic confusion of what an actual battle of the sort might have been like.

Overall, I’m left wondering why I don’t find myself more enthusiastic about the book or more interested in reading the rest of the trilogy. The lack of good female characters may be one reason; there are only two in the book of any note: one a bitchy screwup and one, Ursula, who spends her time disguised as a boy. Maybe it’s because I didn’t really start to feel a connection to the characters until the very end, right when it was clear that everything was about to change again — the next book may be a continuation, but it probably won’t be a continuation of this particular set of circumstances. I don’t know. All I can say is that it didn’t excite me, but I don’t entirely rule out finishing the series.

In Short
In the end, I have mixed feelings about this book. Browne is a good writer, and yet there are other good writers whose stuff I just don’t enjoy. The story itself was pretty solid, but at the end of it I felt like I still had a pretty shallow feel for the two main characters, Ursula and Dan. I was told that they had changed and grown, but since the book started and stopped without any real look at them in the ‘real world’ I have no particular evidence of them either before or after these incidents. There was a distinct lack of female characters, and our one lead female spends almost the entire book pretending to be a boy; the only other prominent female is jealous, impulsive and behaves like a fool. For that alone I should dislike it, but knowing it’s part of a trilogy leaves me with the hope that like many series, it’s much better when taken as a whole.