Rating: WARTY!
This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
Errata:
"....the witch go the fire started." Got?
"staunch the bleeding." Stanch
"Brisbane grit his teeth" gritted
"My business here is done. I will leave on the marrow." Morrow?
My problem with this book (apart from it being a part of a series!) is that it never went anywhere (which begs the question quo vadis the series?!). I managed to read about 25% of it before giving up because it was uninteresting to me as well as annoying. It simply rambled on and on, spending far more time on world-building than ever it did in telling any actual story.
This is part of my problem with series. I typically do not read them because of precisely the problems this one had. The first book in a series is inevitably not a story, but a prologue - and I don't do prologues. Once in a while, a series comes along which does work well and which can justify itself. I've read series which are engaging and which make a reader want more, but often those kinds of stories feel bloated and padded, as well as lethargic and pedantic, and this is how this one felt to me.
The somewhat illiterate blurb tells us that "Allaha is a knight of the Order of Aisha, Fallen of the Mountain. She - like her fellows - is stoic and reserved, trained to fight against demons and their ilk. When she triggers a vision that kills a renown oracle, she is set on a quest to complete the prophecy." That 'renown' should have been 'renowned', but authors don't get to write their own blurbs unless they self-publish, so I typically don't hold them to account for that kind of thing.
For me, the problem here is that the quest never really gets underway despite the endless traveling that these people do. On top of this, the difference between Allaha and an actual knight is, well, day and night, because she never does anything! Not once does she fight! I'm not a fan of endless blood and gore, but you'd think at some point early in the story the author would want to unleash Allaha to show us just how good she is, but no. It's like Allaha is on Quaaludes.
In the part that I read, it was never explained what Allaha's title meant either. Aisha is her god - apparently fallen, but I have no idea what that meant, or why she was still worshipped or considered to have any power if she has fallen. Or was it Allaha who has fallen? I dunno. It was never explained in the part I read. I have no idea what it meant that she was 'of the mountain' either. She often announced herself as Allaha of the Mountain, and everyone seemed to understand what this meant no matter how far she traveled. Even when she was on another mountain entirely, nobody ever asked her which mountain she referred to, or what that title meant, which I felt was a bit much, frankly.
The travelers with Allaha are: Tamara, who is a young woman of the Menori people, who are apparently like the Romany, or maybe itinerant traders? I dunno. Again, it isn't explained. She was also a 'hamalakh', which is a sort of psychic lie detector or trouble detector. Other than that, she was an enigma who we never got to know.
The problem with all of this was that she was alternately referred to as Tamara, as the Menori girl, and as the hamalakh, which initially made it difficult to keep track of who the author was referring to. I had this same problem with the others in the group who remained equally unexplored enigmas even after 25% of this novel, yet annoyingly larded with nouns.
The most annoying of the group were Hibu and Tibu though. Hibu was a sorcerer from Jeongwon, so he was referred to by name, by nationality, and by his profession - again, three initially confusing titles. Tibu wasn't a name but a nationality. His name was Karejakal, also referred to as Karej, and he was a young cat person. So...even more confusion there.
In addition to this we were introduced to multiple new characters every few screens, who came and went like the flickering pages of one of those print books that animates a scene as you let the pages flash by in rapid sequence. It was hard to keep track of anyone. I still have no idea how Allaha came to be playing den mother to any of these people because none of this was explained, or if it was, I missed it somehow. Perhaps that was my fault as I shall explain now.
The novel is a bunch of flashbacks related by Allaha who is evidently being held prisoner. The book starts with her, and then is told in flashbacks, which I personally detest, so every time we start getting into the story, it's brought to a screeching halt for an eyewitness update on Allaha's condition, after which we return to our story in progress. It was annoying as hell. I quickly took to ignoring the Allaha chapters and simply followed the story which made for far better reading, although as I hinted above, perhaps the story of den mother Allaha was related in those portions I skipped. I don't know, and I really don't care at this point.
I was on a cruise ship a few months ago, and they showed free movies every evening, but during the viewing, the idiot cruise director would literally stop the movie and spend two or three minutes rambling on about events taking place on the ship, as if those of us halfway into the movie actually cared. If we had cared, then we'd have been at those events instead of comfortably sitting there trying to enjoy this movie! It was so irritating, and that's what these constant stoppages to get an Allaha status update were like for me.
The author seemed curiously dedicated to keeping us updated on Allaha's unchanging body status, too:
- "Her body was covered in scars and bruises"
- "She was covered in scars and bruises"
- "old scars and colorful bruises"
- "Her body was covered in scars and bruises"
- "She had new scratches and bruises "
- "The scratches and bruises still hurt "
There were other such oddities and annoyances. At one point I read, "She had light red hair, almost more of a dark pink." Seriously? To me, light red has always been pink and dark pink always been red! But I'm a guy and as such am not quite as attuned to nuances of color as women seem to be, so maybe I'm missing something. I don't think I was missing something when I read, "The beds were compressions cut into the ground." I think the author meant 'depressions'? Also, I read, "We know the Zhos; they would not let one of their go free" which should read, 'theirs go free' or maybe 'their number go free'?
Another issue I had was with the phonetic representations of speech. I prefer it to be simply described, with maybe an example given here and there, but for the most part just to have the text in plain unadulterated English. I really don't like this sort of thing: "Come in trou da inn ten" and "Tat it tis." I've made only one exception to this, but in general, my personal preference is to just say they have an accent rather than try to phonetically represent it. Maybe that's just me, but in a novel which was already filling with annoyances, one more didn't help.
The other thing which was really annoying was this other character named Goric, who was a demon, and who floated along as a disembodied head. He was evidently the resident stand-up comedian of the group, but he wasn't funny. He truly became an irritation in short order. None of this helped me to enjoy the story at all. Nor did it make sense for the blurb to tell us that Allaha is "trained to fight against demons and their ilk" and then have her tolerate this one who was apparently tied to the sorcerer, aka Hibu, aka the Jeongwonee.
This group, for some reason which escaped me, was supposed to be figuring out how to stop this darkness that was coming, but there seemed to be no urgency to their 'quest'. This god Aisha whom Allaha worshipped evidently was of no help (because she was fallen?). The sorcerer was useless. No one they met could advise them at all. They were supposedly heading for an oracle, but they travelled literally for weeks and weeks through scrub desert, meadow, jungle and mountain and never seemed to get any closer. Everything that happened to them seemed solely for the purpose of adding new characters, tribes and communities to the world rather than actually moving the story along. To me, that was a major problem with this story and with series in general, and I can't commend this one at all.
