This one was a pretty stark contrast, so let’s get into it.
What did you think of it?
I liked it quite a bit. The worldbuilding aspect of it only kind of clicked for me, but the characters were excellent. I know this is part of a series, and I came away from the book genuinely wanting to know what happens next to most of the (surviving) characters.
As I think back on it now, it’s the characters that work so well in this book. If I were rating out of ten, the plot would only get a six or so. The worldbuilding would maybe get a four or five. The writing itself, even, probably just a five or six. There were some genuinely lovely passages here or there, but generally the non-dialog felt overlong or muddled. The action sequences varied in that regard. Some of them, especially the scenes that weren’t carrying a ton of plot scaffolding, were great. The more important action scenes, though, got quite muddy.
I’m not sure how much I liked the structure of it. The book starts with Locke as a child and then jumps to the “present” of the story. It goes back to the childhood bits (or, later on, short little history lessons of the world) between every chapter (each of which are divided into individual numbered sections)… I can’t begin to imagine how I’d tell someone what my favorite section of the book was…
This is a much less disciplined breakdown than the first book, but then it’s a more complex thing. That said, it does prove out the idea that if you have an interesting character doing interesting things, the rest kind of falls into place. Locke is a great character (and Jean Tannen is maybe even better). Even the supporting cast is extremely fun (barring one guy, but then he’s not supposed to be fun).
Thinking about structure, though, think that if you laid out the main story with the idea of Locke as the main character, it would follow the arc of three act structure pretty cleanly.
I think I liked it less than Le Guin’s book, but that’s pretty stiff competition.
Onward to Uprooted.
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