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Title: The Winds of Khalakovo
Author: Bradley P. Beaulieu
Genre: Steampunk fantasy
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: When a fire elemental assassinates the Grand Duke on his airship, the heir to Duke Khalakovo must work with the traitorous courtesan he loves and the traitorous noblewoman he's supposed to marry to find a mysterious boy.
Thoughts: There are a lot of interesting elements here. The Russian-flavored fantasy is a nice change of pace, there's a complicated world of rival duchies set up, there are not one but two reasonably creative magic systems, and there's a whole lot of juicy interpersonal conflict. I was really engaged for the first half of the book.
I know there are more books in this series, and perhaps some of the questions left unanswered can be found there. However, I don't find myself intrigued by the dangling threads--more just annoyed. This doesn't feel like the beginning to a series. This feels like a stand alone book that failed at its world building.
I was willing to coast along for quite some time, despite never quite understanding how the magic system worked or how the two systems interacted. But that depended on answers eventually appearing, and they somehow never did. Why do the Landed and Aramahn have different magic, and why can they sometimes use the magic of the other? How exactly do the stones work? Nikandr considers getting rid of his at one point, but then later parts of the book make that seem like an impossibility. For that matter, I still don't understand what caused the five special stones to appear, other than Plot Requires This. The introduction of two ancient sorcerers who have been trapped between the worlds for eons kind of implied they would actually be important instead of a minor stopover that also never really made sense.
And those juicy interpersonal relationships also did not pan out as well as might be desired. We're told that Nikandr is devoted to his sister, but the only actions we see from her are those of an irrational bitch. Halfway through the book, we're told that all the other duchies hate Khalakovo enough to go to war, when we had seen no particular evidence of this from the start. Instead, it seems to be mostly because Borund and Grigori and their respective families are irrational jerks. Actually, it's a real running problem--way too many people are dicks because it causes problems for the protagonists, not because they have any real reason to be dicks. Far too many scenes balance of the edge of moustache-twirling.
There was an immense amount of potential here, but it never felt like it paid off.
Author: Bradley P. Beaulieu
Genre: Steampunk fantasy
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: When a fire elemental assassinates the Grand Duke on his airship, the heir to Duke Khalakovo must work with the traitorous courtesan he loves and the traitorous noblewoman he's supposed to marry to find a mysterious boy.
Thoughts: There are a lot of interesting elements here. The Russian-flavored fantasy is a nice change of pace, there's a complicated world of rival duchies set up, there are not one but two reasonably creative magic systems, and there's a whole lot of juicy interpersonal conflict. I was really engaged for the first half of the book.
I know there are more books in this series, and perhaps some of the questions left unanswered can be found there. However, I don't find myself intrigued by the dangling threads--more just annoyed. This doesn't feel like the beginning to a series. This feels like a stand alone book that failed at its world building.
I was willing to coast along for quite some time, despite never quite understanding how the magic system worked or how the two systems interacted. But that depended on answers eventually appearing, and they somehow never did. Why do the Landed and Aramahn have different magic, and why can they sometimes use the magic of the other? How exactly do the stones work? Nikandr considers getting rid of his at one point, but then later parts of the book make that seem like an impossibility. For that matter, I still don't understand what caused the five special stones to appear, other than Plot Requires This. The introduction of two ancient sorcerers who have been trapped between the worlds for eons kind of implied they would actually be important instead of a minor stopover that also never really made sense.
And those juicy interpersonal relationships also did not pan out as well as might be desired. We're told that Nikandr is devoted to his sister, but the only actions we see from her are those of an irrational bitch. Halfway through the book, we're told that all the other duchies hate Khalakovo enough to go to war, when we had seen no particular evidence of this from the start. Instead, it seems to be mostly because Borund and Grigori and their respective families are irrational jerks. Actually, it's a real running problem--way too many people are dicks because it causes problems for the protagonists, not because they have any real reason to be dicks. Far too many scenes balance of the edge of moustache-twirling.
There was an immense amount of potential here, but it never felt like it paid off.
