Robert Jackson Bennett is a weird author to place. He gets lumped in a lot with Brian McClellan and James Islington as sort of the successors to the hypermodern Sanderson school of fantasy. This is the type of fantasy that dispenses with elves and dwarves and dragons and instead reinvents worlds with crazy laws of physics that must be followed exactly to a T, and flawlessly executes intricate bulletproof plots in said worlds.
The thing is, this is not a really good description of Bennett, from the two novels I have now read from him. He's not interested in bloat, side quests, or epic/cosmic plot shenanigans. He basically writes thrillers and mysteries in modern fantasy worlds, very much like a Genevieve Cogman or Rachel Aaron, but since he's a man and writes hard sci-fi descriptions of his magic systems instead of pointless romance subplots, he gets taken more seriously.
I'm more bashing the public's advertising of Bennett than the man himself, because I liked this book. It's a fun and well-executed fantasy novel set in a world that's loosely based on Renaissance era Milan but which ends up feeling very weird and inhuman (and downright Islingtonian). The well-leashed cast of six main characters are all developed well, the pacing is good, the dialogue is snappy, etc. The writing and character interactions, and the sort of “art-style” of the characters, reminded me a lot of Foucault's Pendulum and Umberto Eco in general. It's a novel with impressive construction and execution.
I return to my half-joking “manliness” argument here because I think Bennett in general pays too little attention to any sort of emotional payoffs and instead wants a reader to find catharsis from solving increasingly important problems. If you're an engineering type and you enjoy when a problem is solved from a patient and distant perspective, you'll love this book. If you can't stand the people who methodically sit down, pull out a pencil and a neat sheaf of white paper, and start carefully drafting solutions when something is desperately and urgently wrong, you will be irritated like I was. There's really not enough “human interest” in this book, which is something I rarely find myself saying.
It is fun to figure out how everything works and follow the characters as things are slowly unveiled and they each find their successes. Bennett won't be making it on my all star author list anytime soon, but he's solid enough and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series for sure.
Rating: 7.5/10
Closest comparison: The Sunlit Man, for all the problem solving and engineering jargon.
Decent traditional fantasy. Great friendship/brotherhood writing. The magic school scenes at the beginning of the book are the most convincing. Sags a bit in the middle, but the last couple arcs are very satisfying, and the ending is well worth the read. Don't know if I'll read the sequels, as I've heard mixed things.
Characters are overall good, really liked Lyrna and Frentis. It's a good solid book, didn't really have the wow factor for me but entertaining throughout. 3.5 rounded up to 4.
For a book that is a fantasy novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the people who have recommended this book to me are invariably neither fantasy fans nor Ishiguro fans, which always struck me as a bit of a curiosity. But I now realize that this makes perfect sense. For fantasy fans, this metaphysical, allegorical novel must seem rambling and derivative - for people who have read a lot of Ishiguro before, there's nothing new here. The Unconsoled, while confusing and long, is considerably more lighthearted, funnier, and optimistic than The Buried Giant - and one of the most impressionable books I have ever read. The Buried Giant hits hard in the moment, but that is largely the responsibility of the last few chapters.
The Buried Giant was my fifth Ishiguro, and, like Klara and the Sun, I felt he has been running out of plot and character tricks for a while. The slow reveal of the memories behind the mist, the coincidences of characters meeting each other, mysterious figures appearing on roads, and the sunny-at-first relationship of Axl and Beatrice, came straight out of his previous two novels. It was not until the ending that I found myself surprised or unable to predict a plot point - maybe I've been reading too much epic fantasy, but I wanted more.
Thematically, this might be Ishiguro's strongest and most committed novel. The book employs a wholehearted assault on fundamental Christianity, nationalism, and civil war, while raising sincere questions about the seemingly inverse relationship between objectivity and the building of community. The exceptionally creative ending was quite possibly my favorite of Ishiguro's thus far, and unlike in many of his other books, kept me sustained until the very end.
I will start recommending this as a starting point for readers looking to discover Ishiguro. Its pastoral aesthetic, accelerating plot, and committed themes are particularly convincing to readers of my Gen Z and millenial generation. This is Ishiguro at his most transparent, active, and sincere, and I anticipate this would have easily been five stars had I not encountered many of his tropes beforehand.
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