The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman: a review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

 

The last book I read this year was The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman. It’s the second book in The Book of Dust trilogy, a follow-up to his brilliant His Dark Materials series. It’s a massive book with almost 700 pages, the longest book I read this year, but it didn’t feel long.

The events in the book take place twenty years after the first, La Belle Sauvage. Malcom, the eleven year old boy from the first book, is now in his early thirties and an Oxford scholar. In secret, he’s also a member of the Oakley Street spy organisation that works against the authoritarian Church. Lyra, the heroine of the first trilogy, is an adult too, and an Oxford student. She has changed from the curious and headstrong girl to a believer of a new philosophy that states that daemons aren’t real. Naturally, this upsets Pantalaimon, her pine marten daemon, so much so that he takes off to find Lyra’s imagination.

A murder in Oxford sets the events in motion and sends Malcom, Lyra and Pan on quests through Europe towards the Near East where they may find answers to questions about daemons. They each travel separately, Lyra and Pan too, which causes problems for her, as people without daemons are feared and deplored. A larger background plot about dust unfolds slowly, with members of the Church as the bad guys that chase Malcom and Lyra. The book ends just as it reaches the point where we might learn the answers to all the questions.

I liked this book very much. There are several point of view characters and a reader always knows more than the characters. It’s a heavy book with a lot to say; some of it slightly in-your-face commentary about the state of our world, which jars occasionally. Lyra as an adult seems to have caused the author some difficulties, which he solves by mentioning her sex life, periods, and making her live under a constant threat of violence from men.

The most controversial scene takes place towards the end of the book. It’s a fairly gratuitous rape scene. Lyra is forced to share a train compartment with soldiers who decide to rape her. She’s not completely defenceless and she manages to inflict some real damage on her attackers, and she’s saved before any unforgivable damage happens, but the scene feels unnecessary.

Yes, rape is a possibility when a woman travels alone to a country preparing for a war, but there are other forms of violence that would have driven home her vulnerability. Robbery, for example―she carries the expensive aleomether that the Church wants. Religious zealots disgusted by her lack of daemon attacking her would have worked too, and would have been more in line with the overall plot. And they could have been women attacking her. Throughout the book, only men are a threat and women are nurturing and good, which is quite a change, considering that in the first trilogy the greatest enemy was Lyra’s own mother.

The book ends soon thereafter, but Lyra doesn’t behave like a rape survivor for the remainder. She allows men into her hotel room and sets off for a journey through a desert with a man she has only met. That, more than anything, makes the rape scene feel unnecessary. It doesn’t affect the plot in any way. The best I can say about it is that it isn’t written to titillate; it’s about brutality and violence.

Despite the rape scene, I gave the book five stars. There simply is something in the way Pullman unfolds the story that is masterful and satisfying. Seemingly unconnected events all advance the plot and carry the reader inevitably with it. And the build-up in this book promises that the conclusion of the trilogy will be truly epic.

Catching up: a review bonanza

I’ve neglected my reading blog again, which means I have six books to review since the previous post―not including the books that I have skipped earlier. It’s been a good month and a half with old favourites and new interesting finds. Here’s the summary.

Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler

Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler was a brilliant find. It wasn’t at all what I expected based on the description and the sample chapters. I thought I was getting a swashbuckling pirate story with magic. What I got was a humongous steel ship filled with monsters and teenage mages, who have no idea where the ship is going and why, and who's steering it. Isoka, the main character, has to find her place in the strange society on the ship she's been brought to against her will, and figure out how to gain control of the ship so that she can return home and save her sister. But nothing is how she hopes it would be, not even her.

The book is marketed as YA, but despite the age of the characters, their life experience and the problems they face are not those of teenagers. It's all about survival. Isoka is a fairly unlikeable main character, and she doesn't really improve with softer characteristics she gains, as she lacks the insight to go with them. I actually preferred her as a cold-blooded killer. There was a bit too many fight scenes―the story goes from fight to fight that become repetitive―and the ending seemed slightly rushed. The epilogue didn't really make it stronger, but since the original problem of saving Isoka's sister is yet to happen, I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the Wells of Sorcery series.

Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron

Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron is the first book in DFZ, a new series set in Aaron’s post-apocalyptic, dragon and magic filled Detroit. Opal has a job cleaning unclaimed apartments after their owners die. On one such mission, she finds more than she expects and gets gangsters after her.

Opal is a great character with serious dad issues, and Nik, her side-kick, is an interesting companion. There’s a lot of action, magical and mundane, as the pair tries to find the site of a magical ritual that just might bring them a lot of money. Needless to say, it wasn't as easy as that. I'll definitely read the next book too.

The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman

The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman is book six in The Invisible Library series. This time round Irene and Kai have to team up with a group of criminals to steal a painting for a villain straight from the Bond movies. After the previous book where political machinations pushed the pair to the edge of their skills, this was a rather boring addition to the series. Kai especially was a let-down after becoming a more assertive, interesting character in the previous book. A new political plot is brewing, however, so I’ll keep with the series.

Where Winter Finds You by J.R. Ward

Where Winter Finds You by J.R. Ward is the latest addition to her long Black Dagger Brotherhood series. It’s marked as only half a book, but at 480 pages it’s long enough. It’s a second chance love story, a follow-up for The Shadows where Trez lost his beloved Selena. A woman has moved in Caldwell who resembles Selena perfectly and who dreams of a lover she knows is Trez. He’s convinced his love has been returned to him, but how is that possible, when Theresa has lived a full life already. I must admit I couldn’t see how this could be brought to a satisfying conclusion either, but in the end, the story worked out perfectly. It wasn’t the best BDB book there is, but like always, it was full of emotions that the reader is pulled into, only to emerge tearful and happy in the end.

The Fowl Twins by Eoin Colfer

The Fowl Twins by Eoin Colfer starts a spin-off series for his excellent Artemis Fowl series. Artemis’s little brothers, twins Myles and Becket, are now eleven and ready for adventures of their own. Myles is like Artemis, a genius bent on surpassing his big brother, but not inclined to criminal activities. Becket is more physical of the pair, with an interesting ability to talk with animals―not that anyone believes he actually can do it.

The adventure they are pulled into is typical fast-paced mayhem. Unlike with Artemis books, which are set in the fairy realm, this takes place in the human world, and the bad guys are humans too, a duke and a nun of all people odd. But it wouldn’t be an Artemis spin-off, if fairies weren’t involved. Humans are after fairies and it’s up to the twins to save them with the help of LEP specialist Lazul Heitz. Artemis makes a cameo appearance―he’s on a mission to Mars―as does Holly Short, the LEP officer from Artemis books. It’s a fun book that suits adults perfectly too, even though it’s aimed at ten-year-olds. And I hope the subsequent books take place in the fairy realm because that’s where the magic truly happens.

A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh

A Madness of Sunshine is the first thriller by my favourite paranormal romance author Nalini Singh. It’s set in rural New Zealand where the author lives, and is inspired by Nordic noir books. The story is fairly straightforward: a young woman goes missing and practically everyone is a suspect. Only, they really aren’t; most of them are dismissed easily and if the author attempted to build an atmosphere of mistrust, it doesn’t really work. There are only a couple of plausible suspects and among them the guilty are found. The action is slow and the body count low.

It’s an interesting book nonetheless. Singh can write great characters and as this is very much a character-led book, it’s a pleasure to read. There are two point of view characters, a woman who returns home to recover from a past tragedy and a cop who has taken a job in a small town to recover from a past tragedy. They connect early on, and even though this isn’t a romance, the two getting to know each other carries most of the book. There aren’t great twists in the plot, but the ending is satisfying, even if some motivations of the suspects remain baffling even after the end.

Six books read in six weeks don’t sound much, but there are a few books that I have started and not finished. At this point I’m still three books short of my Goodreads reading challenge of sixty-five books, but I’m confident I’ll be able to make it. I’ll keep you posted―I hope.

The Girl in Red by Christina Henry: review

3/5 stars on Goodreads

The Girl in Red by Christina Henry is the latest book in her series of fairy tale retellings. This one is based on Little Red Riding Hood. The book started with promise, but it ended up leading nowhere. It has no story arch and no conclusion. It has a series of events, and then it ends.

The Girl in Red by Christina Henry

The Girl in Red is set in post-apocalyptic America. Most of the population has been wiped away by a fast-spreading mysterious virus that causes a cough that kills in a couple of days. Red, Cordelia, believes that the safest place is her grandmother’s remote house, and she sets out to walk hundreds of miles there through forests to avoid being taken to government quarantine camps. Militia and people ready to do anything to survive are some of the obstacles she faces.

In Little Red Riding Hood, the journey through the perilous forest is only a part of the story, and not even the major part. The important part is when she reaches the safety of her grandmother’s house and finds that the wolf has reached there first. That’s when the story happens.

The Girl in Red isn’t that book. We follow Red on her perilous journey about two thirds of the way when it abruptly ends, followed by an epilogue showing her reach her grandmother’s house safely. Scent of food indicates that everything is well there. Along the way, there are two encounters with the army ready to take Red to a camp. The third, the important one that should take place after Red believes she’s reached safety, never happens. The book just ends and the reader is left hanging, wondering if this could possibly be the entire book. It is.

It seems like the author hasn’t really understood her source material. The story doesn’t progress anywhere. There are obstacles on Red’s way, some that force her to kill even, but they don’t form an arch. And the dangers she faces are amazingly easily overcome too, especially considering the apocalyptic nature of the setting. The major revelation to Red seems to be that she’s the Huntsman, not the Little Red Riding Hood. That’s not enough to carry a book.

In Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf is a seductive force that lures the hapless girl away from her path so that it can reach the grandmother’s house first. But in this book, we never learn what the wolf is. There’s the virus, but then there’s a monster too. I don’t know why the book needed both, especially since they only serve as a catalyst for the story. It would have been a different matter, if it had turned out that Red’s grandmother has the monster incubating inside her too, but the story never reaches that part of its arch. Instead, it ends just when we learn what the monster looks like―though not why it exists in the first place.

Red is a disappointing character. She’s a twenty-year-old college student, but she comes across as a teenager. She has all the makings of a diverse, something for all character, but none of it has an impact on the story. She has a prosthetic leg, so she’s not physically perfect. But the prosthesis is just a prop. Worse, it’s the Chekhov’s gun alluded to throughout the story (‘I hope my leg don’t give up on me’, ‘I hope I won’t trip’), but which is never fired. She never falls because of it and it never lets her down at an important moment. She walks and runs with a heavy backpack on without trouble, she kicks and defeats grown men without any problems from her leg, and it never even chafes, forcing her to stop. So what’s the point of giving her such vulnerability? None that I could figure out.

Red is also black with mixed background, though with such a light skin and straight hair that she can pass as a Latina, which the author finds important to mention. Her skin colour has no impact on how she identifies, and apart from some rednecks who attack her parents at the beginning of the book, the fact that she’s black plays no role in the book. So what’s the point of mentioning her skin colour? None.

On top of everything, Red is bisexual. The book has no romance or sex, and although sexual violence is constantly hinted at, nothing like that takes place. Why then would it matter that she’s attracted to both men and women? It doesn’t. So Red only looks good on paper. Her diversity has no purpose or impact on the story, which is highly disappointing.

Apart from her character, I found myself annoyed with little details that don’t really matter. Her food comes in tin cans, which is highly impractical on a long trek because they’re heavy and take a lot of space in a backpack. She’s hiking for months, but no mention is made of such nuisances like periods or the availability of toilet paper. How much sanitary products can she fit in her backpack and still have room for food anyway? She also wins all the fights she gets into without getting so much as slapped herself, hacking her opponents to death with her axe. She’s not large or sporty, and has only attended one self-defence class, yet she’s a killing machine all of a sudden.

All in all, this is a deeply flawed book at its root. But the story starts well, and as it’s told in two timelines, before and after, I kept reading to find out what has led to Red’s current situation. It seems like it’s going to something bigger, so I didn’t really notice the flaws until it abruptly ends without delivering what it builds up to. So I gave it three stars. I was going along with the story right to the sudden end, rooting for Red. I just wish the rest of the story would have been there too.

Archangel’s War by Nalini Singh: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Archangel’s War is the latest book in Nalini Singh’s great Guild Hunter urban fantasy/paranormal romance series of a world that has been ruled by archangels and angels for hundreds of thousands of years. They’re not Christian angels, or in any way religious figures; they’re superior beings with wings. There are vampires, powerful creatures that the angels make to serve them, and at the bottom of the feeding chain are humans. It’s been a slightly uneven series, with some of the books dedicated to a longer story and the main romantic couple, and other books to romances of the side characters.

Archangel's War by Nalini Singh

Elena, a guild hunter whose job is to hunt vampires but who becomes an angel, and her archangel, Raphael, have come a long way during the course of the ten books. A war against an evil archangel has been brewing since the beginning, and in this book it finally happens. The book starts with Elena and Raphael waking up from a long sleep with new powers, and they take most of the book to learn to use them to their advantage. And they’re still not entirely ready to face their foe, who has grown in strength too.

It’s a long book, but the pace was good, and it didn’t feel like there was anything unnecessary there. The battle itself took perhaps a bit too large a chunk, but it’s difficult to describe an epic war without giving it proper space. It was emotional at times, as it should be, and the ending was satisfying.

It seems like this is the final book in the series, even though the author hasn’t said so. The war is over and Elena and Raphael are in a good place. But there are a couple of side characters who haven’t had their happily ever after yet, so I’m hoping there will be at least one more book. But if this was it, it was a good way to end the series.

Protect the Prince by Jennifer Estep: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

One of the best reading surprises for me this year was Kill the Queen by Jennifer Estep, the first book in her Crown of Shards fantasy trilogy. It introduced Everleigh, a heroine who is both tough and soft-hearted, and a world that strives to be unique. The economy is based on mining of precious and magical stones, there are creature comforts like indoor plumbing and trains, and gladiator games are not only a form of entertainment, they’re a legal way to settle the matters of throne. Add to that shapeshifting ogres and dragons, and you have an intriguing world.

Protect the Prince by Jennifer Estep

Protect the Prince is a good follow-up to the first book. Everleigh is now the queen, much to her surprise and the dismay of the nobility. Everyone expects her to fail, herself included. But the same enemy that assassinated the entire royal house is still after her head, so she can’t settle down to learn how to be a queen. She needs allies, and for that she heads to the neighbouring kingdom. Only problem is, the king there blames her for the death of his son in the massacre.

This book doesn’t have a similar satisfying arch like the first, where the massacre of the royal house forced Evie into hiding in a gladiator troupe until she was strong enough to kill the evil queen. Still, quite a lot happens in this book, mostly assassination attempts against Evie. The book is helpfully divided into sections that count the attempts, giving the reader something to anticipate. And, since this is the middle book, the ending is open enough for a grand finale in the last one.

Where the book is at its weakest is its characters. It’s a first person narrative, which makes Evie the character we learn the most about. She has all the friends she made in the previous book with her, but for most of the book, she stands alone. Other characters are just a backdrop to her, there when she needs them, but with no real interaction or impact on the story. This includes Sullivan, the bastard son of the king and sort of love-interest to Evie.

Sully was a distant figure in the first book too, which made the romance budding between him and Evie feel forced. This book didn’t bring any change to that, even though the reader is given background into the heartbreak that made him leave the kingdom and join a gladiator troupe; it’s something Evie accidentally overhears, not something Sully shares with her. So when he and Evie declare their feelings, it mostly feels like empty words—even to the very end.

I also hoped that better use would’ve been made of the unique features of the world, like the shapeshifting ogres, or gargoyles that were introduced in this book. With Evie handling a battle after a battle alone, there was no room for any of that. All this made it a more traditional fantasy book.

Despite the weaknesses, it’s a good book. It’s action-packed and interesting to the end. And Evie does grow, finding her magic when it matters the most. The last book in the trilogy promises to be more unique again, so I’m looking forward to reading that too.