Roo

Rating: 3.75 Stars

Matthew Reilly writes a very specific kind of book. I know this, and I went in knowing it. Matthew Reilly writes books that are more akin to big summer blockbusters with dazzling set pieces that have thrown realism out the window, because what are we here for, if not to be entertained? If you go in, knowing this, not expecting to read a book overly concerned with the practicalities of survival in life and death situations, then I believe you'll have a great time. Turn off the rational mind, enjoy the action. Let the ride take you along.

If you're the type to get bogged into “but that wouldn't happen!”, maybe set the book down. It's okay, it's not for you. Because make no mistake, Matthew Reilly writes books that doesn't overly care about the survival rates of limb amputations from a killer whale's bite, and cares more about the fact that that one soldier survived being dropped in a pool with said whales by stunning them, and that is cool. Rule of cool is the name of the game here, with a fair chunk of well researched knowledge about the weapons of choice of various commando units and what makes research stations go boom, but largely, we're talking rule of cool.

The plot is simple: something is found in a remote ice station in Antarctica, and the resulting distress signal sends that information out to the world. Multiple factions across the world converge on the titular ice station with various aims. We largely follow the American Marine unit sent it, as the base is American, who are sent to secure the station and ensure the safety of its research scientists. A few chapters every now and again weave in a few other characters who circulate around the plot that occurs in the southernmost continent of the world. Action comes thick and fast, and the writing suits it. This is Reilly's second book, but largely, his writing in my experience has always been the same - largely simple, easy to parse, and often in short sections that serve the action of the story well.

Reilly, in this book, is especially fond to two things. The first is cutting away to a different viewpoint or piece of action without revealing what a character has just understood in the aim of extending tension - which does work, to his credit - and occasionally inserting a few paragraphs that go to show that he has done great research on the matter at hand, even if it's done more so in an infodump fashion. In terms of being the most sophisticated writing in the world, this is not it. But, it gets the job done, and the job is simple: it is to entertain me. And I am entertained, rooting for the small Marine unit that comes under heavy opposition and facing stacked odds against it.

It's always been where Reilly succeeds. He loves an underdog story, of great odds and good people trying their best to overcome them. Sometimes, his villains are written almost larger than life, but I'm not here to consume these books to make think pieces and philosophical arguments about the roles of military use in the world. I came here to enjoy a fun ride that made use of, amongst other things, killer whales.

So, yes. 3.75 stars. I enjoyed my time. I'll probably come back to the book, as I have done before. However, I knew what it was. Reilly isn't trying to craft the next great novel of the twenty first century. He's not trying to create the new classic of the genre. He's trying to do something more achievable, and perhaps, more important: he's trying to entertain you. And if you come out of a chapter with a grin on your face because someone held the line and survived when they shouldn't, or finished an opponent with a quip, or simply because you found Wendy the furseal as the most adorable thing in the world, then he's done his job.

So grab the popcorn. Shut down the logical side of your brain. Anything that you need to keep in mind, you will be told. Otherwise, suspend disbelief, and for half a dozen hours or so, let yourself be pulled into a fantasy of an action film set at the bottom of the world. You just might have some fun.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

There is an intriguing world premise and magical system here. A world with magic harvested from dreams? Assassins who are both kindly caretaker for the end and also a tool for rooting out corruption? So much of that is so up my alley that I was ready to dive right in. The only issue is, the hook never quite set in.

I can't tell you what it is about this book that didn't quite grab at me. The plot itself is relatively standard but that doesn't mean it can't get inbetween your ribs. I've read books that are just about finding magical items or retrieving a lost family member, and they've hooked me well enough with just that alone. For the themes on murder and euthanasia/kindness in death, in life and death itself, those were all good things that I enjoyed. Of the three main characters, two of them were at loggerheads and some of the most interesting parts were when they argued with one another and made me think on the nature of the magic and the world's construction. There are good bones here, but I just... didn't feel a huge pull with the greater plot.

Was it the villain who was just potentially okay? Was it the shortness of the book, though I don't much think that adding more pages would have necessarily creating a more compelling narrative. I don't know. I liked it, but I wasn't enthralled. It didn't spin me into a dream and enchant me, and I was never frantically turning the page like I did for say, the Lies of Locke Lamora, to see what happened next. As a concept, it was good, but in reality, I just didn't get overly invested, which is part of what I want for a book.

Rating: 4 stars

My initial thought coming out of this collection of short stories is that Andrzej Sapkowski understands fairytales. Fairytales and fables served a purpose within our society, back when books were not written for literary value, because the purchasing of ink and paper was too expensive and precious to be wasted on made up things. So what did society do instead? We told tales, passed down through generations, filled them with a meaning and a moral that we hoped to impart, and that was where storytelling was kept. Sapkowski, it seems to me, understands fairytales and folklore, and holds it with a respect in his heart, for though it's easy to dismiss fairytales as tales for children, the reality is, they are tales for people, irrespective of age. The only thing that truly changes about the tales we read as we get older is the message hidden in the middle of it, and how willing we are to see it.

As a collection of stories, these are all based off folklore and even a few fairytales, though Sapkowski often subverts or draws from older material as opposed to the more modern interpretations of the tales. There isn't however, sly winks and nods at the fact that he is subverting these tales. All too common it seems with subversions of tropes, it has to be done in such a great way, to make you understand that this is not a fairytale. The favourite ways seem to be in great displays of bloodshed, either towards the protagonist, to make these tales more adult (and therefore, one might argue, worthy of respect) or towards the villains. One of the more straight forward examples I can give is of George R. R. Martin and his treatment of Sansa, who is the prototypical captured princess - through ASOI&F, she is subjected to cruelty and violence all around her, and while we do understand that her story is a subversion, because Sansa is outgrowing her role as captured princess and has begun to rescue herself, it is not without throwing heaping helpings of violence to motivate her. You read the passages and wish that GRRM had found a different way to make his story more adult, rather than simply including sex and violence as a shorthand to do so.

That isn't to say that the Witcher world doesn't have sex, or violence. It has both. But I did not feel when reading these stories that they were used as shorthand of “this is an adult story”. What made me feel like these stories were adult fairytales were what they reckoned with - contemplations of aspects of love, racism, failures of families, the weight of fate, faith, the nature of man and what we chose to be. The sex and violence felt in service to a greater thought that Sapkowski was exploring through Geralt's experiences. It held within it the heart of an adult fable.

In terms of an introduction to the Witcher world, I did come out feeling like I wanted more. Obviously, these short stories were written separately, and before the Witcher book series was a distinct thought in the author's mind as far as I'm aware. I can't truly expect that have all the base world lore explained to me, because I'm not entirely sure that Sapkowski had it all there when he was writing. But it was an interesting glimpse into the world that did have me heading to Google to try and get the background information that I wanted, so it definitely did intrigue. As someone who watched the Netflix adaptation first (don't strike me down), the characters felt like I imagined they would have, but with the obvious benefit of some added depth. Because I watched the adaptation first, I feel I can't really say how the character traits came across, because my initial reactions were coloured by my prior knowledge, but I felt like I could see a kernel in each character that would have endeared me to all of them from the start, even if I hadn't. For a world like the Witcher, which is meant to be darker and more morally ambiguous, I appreciated that when we met the characters, we saw that they all still managed to care for others. It's something that makes the Witcher stand aside from ASOI&F in my mind - even though the world feels darker, I feel like I still have hope in this world, for the characters, for their story, because even when they are facing down mortal peril, they still care about the others around them enough to try and save them.

For my one real negative, it would be that Sapkowski's prose is very sparse. Whether this is because of translation issues, the sheer nature of the Polish language or just that these were written as a collection of short stories rather a novel, I'm not sure. But if you come into this book expecting sweeping descriptions and beautiful metaphors, this is not that book for you. You seem to get just enough description to paint the barest framing for the story, and then the narration moves along. Dialogue can be quite heavy to move the story from A to B, and so if you are someone who is listening to an audiobook and prone to switching in and out of focus (or if you find yourself idly skimming), I would perhaps try an alternate method of reading to get the most of it. I did enjoy my introduction to the Witcher, and I will be reading onwards, but it is something that you need to be aware of, at least when going into this collection of short stories - the writing style may need some level of adjustment to get used to. In other notes, sometimes I did have a moment or two of going “this was definitely written by a man”, but nothing too egregious.

But otherwise, if you like folklore and fairytales but want it a bit more adult, without the copious amounts of sex and violence to act as the shorthand to make it so, then I'd recommend trying these short stories.

Rating: 4 Stars

This is a reread of the Winner's trilogy, and even clearly out of the target demographic, I still dearly love this series.

A few things to bring up before we head into the review - this is a very low fantasy world. Magic? Not in the wheelhouse here, neither are dragons. A strong point in this book is also the romantic pairing, but not just in their romance. The interplay between the two characters and the opposing sides that they fall on do have a lot to do with the plot and pushing it forwards. This does mean that it takes a little longer for the mainline plot of the novels to kick in, as we require the time to build the relationship between the two protagonists, in order to create any believability.

First of all, the prose. I find Rutkoski's prose to be beautiful, and her ability to spin an evocative metaphor is on show. I like my prose a little bit of the showy side, and Rutkoski does enough to hit that poetic longing that I enjoy, without straying too far into the purple prose aspect of it all. It's not an overly convoluted prose style, and it doesn't require an awful amount for the reader, but it has a sense of lyricism that I have always genuinely appreciated.

Second of all, the characters, notably Kestrel, the female protagonist. Kestrel was created either during or shortly after a boom of female characters that were warriors. I don't blame the audience for wanting characters to be more than passive bystanders or damsels in distress, but Kestrel toes a different line. When I first read this book, I remember being so pleased and refreshed by Kestrel, because while Kestrel isn't a warrior able to go head to head with her enemies with a sword, she was a strategist, and the book never shies away from the consideration that her intellect could be just as cutting and cruel as any piece of sharpened steel. For the majority of the book, we see Kestrel in dresses and ribbons, and yet, never once do I doubt that she has the ability to stand on her own and win over others and exert her own will on the world, not through strength of arms, but through the cunning of her mind.

And, even better, we never see her looking down on other types of strength. Endurance, force of arms, even just the softness and loyalty that she could easily manipulate in others - Kestrel respects them all. In so many books, in order to make the warrior woman seem stronger, that same character then espouses the weakness of womens work or of mothers, but not here. Kestrel, at the time I first read these novels and still to now, is a refreshing example of a female character who is not the strongest, but does not disparage of a lack of strength, who proves strength is not a facet of simply muscles and physicality, but a many faceted thing that people can embody in multiple ways.

Onto some other aspects - yes, we are dealing with themes of colonialism, war and revolution, as the main characters fall on two ends of the spectrum in the society, conqueror and conquered. I am wholeheartedly admitting here that I am not the right person to speak to how these themes are handled. My gut instinct says that it is handled with a degree of grace, showing the privilege of Kestrel, even in her thoughts showing with an imperiousness towards her slaves, labelling the slaves as they are and not simply as “servants”, and in allowing Arin's anger and the anger of the Herrani people to be shown. You never get the sense in the writing that the Valorian empire is a good one, but whether or not it goes far enough to show this is something that I can't answer, from my own place of privilege. Undoubtedly, some people may believe that the romantic pairing between Kestrel and Arin is not acceptable under any circumstances, and I would be hard to argue against them. From my point of view, I feel like Rutkoski was trying to handle the story and the pairing with care, but perhaps the care was curtailed with trying to remain within the constraints of a YA novel.

Overall, I greatly enjoy this series for what it is - a low fantasy, YA series about a strategist girl and the slave she buys, and what that sparks for their society around them. I enjoy the relationship cultivated between the two, and buy that it is more than simply an attraction based upon physical appearance. I enjoy a different kind of character than what is normally seen for women, and how she navigates the challenges of the plot, all through a prose that I find delightfully lyrical.

Rating: 4 Stars

Ah, Robin Hobb.

If you liked Assassin's Apprentice, I feel like you will enjoy Royal Assassin. If you struggled with Assassin's Apprentice, you will struggle again, and as Royal Assassin is even longer, the struggle will be worse. I always find to know this upfront to be good - the second book in the Farseer trilogy is written in much the same vein as the first, so if you came to Royal Assassin, hoping for a change of pace from the first book (given the end of it), I am sorry to tell you that you will leave largely disappointed. However, if you made your way through Assassin's Apprentice and found its slower pace to your liking, I do believe you will enjoy Royal Assassin.

With that out of the way, let's talk Royal Assassin. Though the book covers what I believe is only, at maximum, two years of Fitz' life, Hobb is drawn to detailing the minute details of Fitz' life as it shaped and honed him into the man who writes the chapter epigraphs. Something that I have constantly needed to adjust to within these books is that what plots I expect to be book plots, are actually plots for the wider trilogy, and so don't resolve quickly. They are threads, twining throughout, from the first book and now through the second and into the third. In the modern landscape of faster, more plot orientated fantasy books, I did sometimes need remembrance for the fact that this is a book far more concerned with the characters. If I was reading these books at time of release and had to wait for each next, I imagine I could feel slightly annoyed at this fact, for needing to wait for answers, but there is also a kind of slow revealing of mysteries that tantalises too. I don't think either approach is wrong, but if you cannot allow the book to be a slow revelation, then I wouldn't recommend it to you, because it demands your patience.

What then is the plot of this book? I believe the title is an apt descriptor - this book concerns itself with the realities of being both a bastard born to a royal lineage, sometimes hated and reviled, sometimes treated as almost a prince himself, and the realities of being an assassin. To be a royal demands to be seen, to be an assassin demands to be hidden. To be royal demands to lead, to be an assassin demands to serve. Ultimately, the plot of this book, to my mind, is how Fitz must navigate the two worlds that both lay a hold on him.

So, why the four star? Because I read this book, finished this book, and then spent two and a half hours when I needed to be asleep to get ready for my work, staring at my ceiling and processing. Because these characters nettle under your skin and find a home there, and you feel honest emotions about them. I would never say, in my experience, that I am ambivalent about the characters in this trilogy. I have been enraged, disappointed, hurt, upset, happy, frustrated, all of these - and if there are a lot of negative emotions there, it is because Hobb also is quite fond of taking the rug from under her character's feet and watching them fall. There are mysteries here, of the Elderlings, the Forging, even just the Fool, and the answers are slow to come and make me greedy like a child seeing an inviting cookie jar in front of them.

Ultimately, Royal Assassin reads much like Assassin's Apprentice. If you liked one, you'll like the second. It asks for your patience and your investment, and if you don't mind a slower novel, but also one that doesn't mind to batter at your emotions, then it is worthwhile read.