I read: The Rook

I was reading The Rook on a visit home, and my Dad asked what I was reading.

"The Rook," I replied. "Its fantasy...and weird."

He laughed, saying something to the effect that most fantasy is weird.

I suppose he's right. It is, after all, fantasy. The genre is not necessarily bound by the norm. My favorite fantasy series, Game of Thrones is fairly down to earth, you know once you set aside the freakishly long winters, dragons, white walkers, people coming back from the dead, and the ability that some characters have to jump into the consciousness of animals. Other than that though, it reads like historical fiction.

The Rook though is WEIRD. It centers around Myfanwy Thomas, a woman who has lost her memory who happens to be a high ranking official in a secret government organization that deals with the super-natural. When I found it on Amazon, I thought The Rook sounded like "The Bourne Trilogy meets the X-Files" and was intrigued.

The thing that threw me off a bit though was the book is, or tries at least, to be funny. At times, Daniel O'Malley reminded me of Douglas Adams. Not that this is a bad thing (Adams is one of my favorite authors) but, it wasn't expected. If I knew that The Rook was going to be as light as it was, I may have found it more enjoyable. There are times when the characters seem so nonchalant about their situtation that it can be very frustrating. "They seem to be taking this Belgian invasion of Britain kind of lightly," you might say while reading this book. In one particular maddening point, Myfanwy decides that, in the face of this impending invasion and trying to figure out why she has lost her memory that she'll reconnect with her long-lost sister by going clubbing.

This may have been the case of expectations clashing with reality. What I expected from The Rook is not what I got. This isn't to say it isn't enjoyable or there's a good story in it. Its just that the story sometimes doesn't take itself seriously. I don't know if O'Malley was striving for supernatural thriller or something akin to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but combining the two didn't work for me. That said, I feel that O'Malley could pull off either style should he commit to one or the other.

I Read: Throne of the Crescent Moon

Oh, so glad it is summer and I can read what I want! I was able to finally read something that I downloaded to my Kindle in February, and Throne of the Crescent Moon provided me with an awesome escape for a few days.

I don't know if it would be fair to say "With great power comes great responsibility" is a theme in all fantasy novels, but it is a theme that keeps coming up. Throne of the Crescent Moon is no exception. In the novel, a lot of people have power. It could be political power, such as the Kalif or the Falcon Prince hold or it could be magical power like Abdoulla the ghul hunter and his companions hold. What these characters do with that power is telling.

Right from the start, its established that Abdoulla is aging and maybe not up to the task of killing ghouls as he once was. But, time and time again he talks himself into doing it because 1) someone has to and 2) there aren't many left like him that can dispatch ghouls. I think this contrasts neatly with the Kalif and the royal family who, while not getting a lot of time on the page, are referred to often usually along the lines of "the Kalif's doctors could have saved the child..." In fact the whole motivation for The Falcon Prince boils down to what he would do with the Kalif's power, power that is known and unknown.

For that serious of a tone though, the book does offer some really fun moments. After all, this is a place where the spells are cast to make the palace smell nice (and, consequently, route unpleasant smells through other parts of the city). It has a character that can turn into a lioness. Abdoulla cracks jokes all the time. There's a lot of fun to the story.

There are some things that get kind of repetative throughout the novel though. About halfway through, you might say something like, "I get it, Abdoulla is old," or "I get it, Raseed is conflicted,". Raseed might be the most frustrating character in the book. He's very religiously devout at the age of 15, and despite following Abdoullah around for some time never seems to loosen up. I think he takes himself too seriously and feels that even at his young age, he should know all the answers. I suppose this is how a lot of teenagers feel though. The world makes sense to them, and why does the world keep throwing these change-ups at me?

As far as world building goes, the story is fairly localized but the map at the beginning of the novel hints that there might be a larger story to tell. Indeed, this is the first novel in a trilogy, and I'll be looking forward to the next offering by Saladin Ahmed. The stakes seem fairly high in book 1 and I can't wait to see how they're raised in the second act.