The Straits of Galahesh

I was really looking forward to this one because of how much I enjoyed the first book in the series, The Winds of Khalakovo, which I gave 4-stars to. However, I ended up being pretty disappointed.

This I had to give only 2/5 stars to.

The book itself has three main characters: Nikander, Atiana, and Nasim. There a myriad of short chapters in the mix from the POV of other characters as well, but the main focus is on the three mentioned above. I would try to give a synopsis, but the plot sprawls so far and wide that I almost don't know where to start. Anyway it starts five years after the events of Winds with Nasim being restored to some sense of normalcy. So he spends most of his time wandering around somewhat aimlessly, but loosely in search of various parts of the Atalayina which is the stone used to open the rifts in the world that were the prominent feature in the first book. Nikander spends time using his new found connection with a wind spirit trying to heal people, and Atiana volunteers to get married to a far off prince for political purposes. These three threads all start to revolve around the exiled inhabitants of Gayahvard, the originators of the rifts that trouble Anuskaya and there attempt to escape the island and finish what they started.

The pros primarily revolve around the worldbuilding and characterization. When I read the first book I was a little skeptical of the vaguely Russian flavor of world Beaulieu was building, but strangely he made it work pretty well, and the second book is no exception. In general the world is nice and complex, although in this book I felt there were a couple of inconsistencies which I'll talk more about in the next paragraph.

Ok the cons . . . Unfortunately there are quite a few. First of all, the plot had pacing issues. I can't be more specific than that, but I picked up and put this book down (metaphorically speaking, as I own it on my kindle . . . ) around 4 times before I actually finished. While I'm on plot, I think Beaulieu tried to do too much with this book. In Winds there were also many story threads, but each one was woven appropriately into the story to further the book as a whole, whereas in this book I felt a lot of the storylines just kind of wandered around in the great swampy middle without forwarding the progress of the book very much. Then as the climax approached it was like all of a sudden these meandering threads were pulled straight together in a very short time, in an unrealistically short time. It seemed that Beaulieu was just wandering through the book and then all of a sudden decided he needed to tie everything together. In his defense, he did tie it all together in the end, it just seemed sort of un-natural and direct given the way the rest of the book had progressed. On a side note the book was really, really, long . . .

The biggest issue I had with this book, was the way Beaulieu played fast and loose with the rules of his own world. If there is one thing a genre writer needs to maintain the “fictional dream” for me consistency is it. The different gemstones played a serious role in the first book as to how the various spirits and whatnot were wrangled, but in this book it seemed they weren't really necessary. The last example I will cite is the random transportation abilities developed by certain characters at the end. Distance seemed no object, just kill some poor soul and a tunnel opened to where ever you wanted it to go. And the kids man . . . why was there so much child sacrifice? One instance is ugly, but acceptable as a plot point, by the end it just seemed gratuitous.

So in summary, a followup to Winds that was less than spectacular. I can only hope that number three redeems the series.

See other reviews that I have written at my blog http://lazerbrain.wordpress.com