![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Kings of the North
Author: Elizabeth Moon
Genre: Epic fantasy (book 2 of a follow-up trilogy)
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: Dorrin comes to terms with being a Duke; Andressat visits everyone ever; Arvid doesn't steal something; Kieri deals with forest fires and badly foreshadowed love.
Thoughts: What I've always loved most about Moon's writing is the quiet character beats between the big action pieces. She has a way of revealing character through small actions--buying gifts at a fair, liking mushrooms, watching bees hover over honeycomb--that I find immensely appealing. This book is a chance to revisit a number of beloved characters and enjoy a few more such moments with them.
Which is fortunate, because otherwise this book has no plot.
It's a regrettable collision between middle-book-itis and resting on laurels. There are several plotlines--Dorrin's dukeship, Arvid's catastrophe of a sting--that really do nothing but tie up a few things left over from the previous book. And there are several more--Stammel as the Blind Archer, the possible betrayal of the Lady--that appear to exist only to set up a different, more interesting book. There is nothing at all resolved.
So there are two plotlines left. In one, the Count of Andressat visits everyone and tells them the same story. Seriously, the same story. The third person narrator tells it to us. Then Andressat tells it to Stammel, Arcolin, Aliam, Phelan, Dorrin, the Tsaian king, and some random gnomes. We get to hear it fresh each time. No one reacts in an unsurprising fashion. (There's a lot of this in this book--people telling each other things we already know, with no new revelation--but this plotline is the most egregious example.) When he goes home, he has a small epiphany. Really, every chapter he is in could have been condensed to just the first chapter and then last, with an off-handed mention that he told some people up north.
In the other, Kieri Phelan finds a bride. Who has basically no characterization or screen time until he's chosen her. It's heavily foreshadowed and yet completely nonsensical. Her entire characterization up to that point has been limited to which group she's affiliated with, he decides he wants someone from that group of the correct age, she is, and we're suddenly supposed to think of them as star-crossed lovers. So of course his thwarted bride has to flee to Dorrin to rehash the whole thing.
I enjoyed individual moments of this book. I do want to know what happens, and so will read the third book. But I kind of wish this book had just been edited down to half its length, then split and incorporated into the previous and following books. There's no there there.
Author: Elizabeth Moon
Genre: Epic fantasy (book 2 of a follow-up trilogy)
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: Dorrin comes to terms with being a Duke; Andressat visits everyone ever; Arvid doesn't steal something; Kieri deals with forest fires and badly foreshadowed love.
Thoughts: What I've always loved most about Moon's writing is the quiet character beats between the big action pieces. She has a way of revealing character through small actions--buying gifts at a fair, liking mushrooms, watching bees hover over honeycomb--that I find immensely appealing. This book is a chance to revisit a number of beloved characters and enjoy a few more such moments with them.
Which is fortunate, because otherwise this book has no plot.
It's a regrettable collision between middle-book-itis and resting on laurels. There are several plotlines--Dorrin's dukeship, Arvid's catastrophe of a sting--that really do nothing but tie up a few things left over from the previous book. And there are several more--Stammel as the Blind Archer, the possible betrayal of the Lady--that appear to exist only to set up a different, more interesting book. There is nothing at all resolved.
So there are two plotlines left. In one, the Count of Andressat visits everyone and tells them the same story. Seriously, the same story. The third person narrator tells it to us. Then Andressat tells it to Stammel, Arcolin, Aliam, Phelan, Dorrin, the Tsaian king, and some random gnomes. We get to hear it fresh each time. No one reacts in an unsurprising fashion. (There's a lot of this in this book--people telling each other things we already know, with no new revelation--but this plotline is the most egregious example.) When he goes home, he has a small epiphany. Really, every chapter he is in could have been condensed to just the first chapter and then last, with an off-handed mention that he told some people up north.
In the other, Kieri Phelan finds a bride. Who has basically no characterization or screen time until he's chosen her. It's heavily foreshadowed and yet completely nonsensical. Her entire characterization up to that point has been limited to which group she's affiliated with, he decides he wants someone from that group of the correct age, she is, and we're suddenly supposed to think of them as star-crossed lovers. So of course his thwarted bride has to flee to Dorrin to rehash the whole thing.
I enjoyed individual moments of this book. I do want to know what happens, and so will read the third book. But I kind of wish this book had just been edited down to half its length, then split and incorporated into the previous and following books. There's no there there.
