Even though my reaction to A Magic of Twilight was rather lukewarm, when I saw A Magic of Nightfall in the bookstore I was excited and picked it up right away. For all of the flaws in book 1 it still left me wanting more, so Nightfall got prioritized pretty quickly in my stack.
I’ll say one thing for A Magic of Nightfall – it’s ballsy. Book 1 didn’t exactly end of a cliffhanger, but it did leave off in the midst of some action, and I was fully expecting Book 2 to pick up right where that action left off. Farrell, however, had other ideas, and Nightfall starts after about a 25 year gap in time. Needless to say, I was quite surprised…. but Farrell pulled it off pretty well. I was impressed by how naturally and organically the jump in time was executed. The characters had all aged and changed and developed in the intervening period, and I think the gap was necessary to move the story a long and really take it to the epic level that Farrell was aiming for.
Speaking of ballsy, the author makes a couple of moves within the first few chapters that left my jaw hanging open – I won’t elaborate since it would be impossible to do so without spoilers, but I will say that Farrell really stepped up to the plate and showed that he’s not afraid to take charge of his characters. Very Martin-esque in that regard.
For all the panache and promise that Nightfall started out with, I had high hopes for the book. Unfortunately, a lot of my gripes from the first novel wormed their way back into play. The biggest trouble surrounded characterization, yet again. Much like in Twilight, I didn’t feel all that attached to any of the characters and I felt like they had some inconsistencies. Farrell did a better job this time around of making his characters motivations make sense (and some of the motivational ambiguities from the 1st book were cleared up), but I just didn’t feel an emotional “umph” around any of the characters. Even some of the characters that I had started to sympathize with in the first book just didn’t quite make a connection with me during book 2. It was frustrating – I wanted to be emotionally wrapped up in the characters and their plight, but there was just something missing.
Character gripes aside, the story itself was (much like the first book) pretty solid, pretty engaging, and pretty good.
“Pretty” is cropping up a lot in this review – I should work on my synonyms. Fairly solid. Somewhat engaging. Moderately interesting. Reasonably good. A decent variety of words to express how I felt about the other aspects of the story. It had a nice ebb and flow with good buildups and lulls, all climaxing towards a solid finish. That said, by the end of the book I was kind of ready for it to be over. I raced through the last 80 pages not because I was on edge about how the story would end, but because I just wanted it to be done with already. I think this might be a personal problem, rather than a problem with the book itself – I do know better than to load too much epic fantasy into one month, so it may be that I just didn’t get enough variety in literature the last few weeks since I packed in both Twilight and Nightfall.
Well. A lot of that text sounds mediocre-to-negative, but believe it or not, A Magic of Nightfall was a good book. If you enjoyed A Magic of Twilight you’ll certainly enjoy its sequel, and (like me) will probably appreciate some of the polish to the characters and the risks that Farrell was willing to take as an author. I very much approve of the epic scope the Nessantico Cycle, and I look forward to seeing where the author takes his readers for book 3 – since just at this moment I have no idea where the plot could be headed! The bottom line: read it, but maybe give yourself a sufficient breather between books 1 and 2. Fill the gaps with some nice funny Pratchett or clever Doctorow, then be ready to plot head-long into the more dense epic fantasy that Farrell provides.
Showing posts with label S. L. Farrell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label S. L. Farrell. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
[Lisa’s Take] A Magic of Twilight (S. L. Farrell)
I wasn’t overly impressed by the first S. L. Farrell book I reviewed, so I haven’t been going out of my way to pursue his work. But a couple of weeks back I found myself on a business trip having grossly underestimated the number of books I needed to keep me entertained, so I had to hit the airport bookstore (which are hardly known for their impressive fantasy selection). Pickins’ were slim, so I went with an author that I knew would probably be at least marginally entertaining, and ended up with A Magic of Twilight.
A Magic of Twilight reads a lot like something by Jennifer Fallon, which is to say that it’s solid political fantasy with good characterizations and plenty of drama, betrayal, and intrigue. The setup is pretty classic for this sub-genre: there are POV characters, a magic system, governmental factions at odds, strong but aging monarchs, and persecuted minorities. Hmm. I’m making a lot of lists, which never codes well for the overall tone of my review. Let me skip to some details.
Characters, delicious characters! First and foremost, I have a question. What is it with S. L. Farrell and sexually abused young girls? Sorry, I just had to put that out there – both books I’ve read by him have involved exploitative sex, which seems an odd recurring them. Anyway, glib questions aside, there was good and bad to be had in regards to the characters in A Magic of Twilight. My biggest complaint is that while there were a whole handful of PoV characters, only one or two of them really felt all that real. Even though we were inside a lot of different heads, the tone and emotions didn’t change very much. The only truly distinct voices where Dhosti and Ana (and later the commandant), which is a shame since they all had so much potential.
The other big character gripe I had is that… hmm. How to express this. I feel like the author wanted to create “gray” characters, rather than ones that were distinctly black and white, good and evil. This worked out ok with one or two characters, but with some of them it just made them seem wishy-washy or underdeveloped. I feel like Farrell needed to establish a stronger character personality baseline before he tried to muddy the waters with ambiguity. Still – all of that said, the characters managed to be interesting and engaging. I was emotionally invested in their wellbeing, and I found myself picking rather unexpected favorites towards the end of the book.
The story itself was quite good, though for the most part it can be codified down into major political fantasy archetypes. Regardless, it was still entertaining, and save for a lull in the middle it moved along quickly. There was one particularly neat aspect: I felt like most books would have stretched the first half of the book longer, and ended it at the major plot turning point near the middle of the book. AMoT kept that first half more condensed instead, and moved along from said Big Plot Point into a whole second chunk of story. It was kind of cool, and definitely shook up what I expect from the standard “trilogy” breakdown. I’m really interested to see where book 2 goes.
I do have one serious gripe about the plot: without being too revealing, the “big twist” at the end put a sour note on the entire book for me. I felt like it broke a couple of characterizations, lacked motivation, and was included more as a way to make the reader want book 2, than as a well considered story progression. Honestly if not for the last few pages the tone of this review would have been much more positive overall – but finishing that way put me in a grumpy place.
Regardless, for all of the negatives I found to harp on, I did enjoy A Magic of Twilight. I may not run out and buy the sequel immediately, but I’ll be looking to it to tide me over until the next Jennifer Fallon book makes it to US shores.
A Magic of Twilight reads a lot like something by Jennifer Fallon, which is to say that it’s solid political fantasy with good characterizations and plenty of drama, betrayal, and intrigue. The setup is pretty classic for this sub-genre: there are POV characters, a magic system, governmental factions at odds, strong but aging monarchs, and persecuted minorities. Hmm. I’m making a lot of lists, which never codes well for the overall tone of my review. Let me skip to some details.
Characters, delicious characters! First and foremost, I have a question. What is it with S. L. Farrell and sexually abused young girls? Sorry, I just had to put that out there – both books I’ve read by him have involved exploitative sex, which seems an odd recurring them. Anyway, glib questions aside, there was good and bad to be had in regards to the characters in A Magic of Twilight. My biggest complaint is that while there were a whole handful of PoV characters, only one or two of them really felt all that real. Even though we were inside a lot of different heads, the tone and emotions didn’t change very much. The only truly distinct voices where Dhosti and Ana (and later the commandant), which is a shame since they all had so much potential.
The other big character gripe I had is that… hmm. How to express this. I feel like the author wanted to create “gray” characters, rather than ones that were distinctly black and white, good and evil. This worked out ok with one or two characters, but with some of them it just made them seem wishy-washy or underdeveloped. I feel like Farrell needed to establish a stronger character personality baseline before he tried to muddy the waters with ambiguity. Still – all of that said, the characters managed to be interesting and engaging. I was emotionally invested in their wellbeing, and I found myself picking rather unexpected favorites towards the end of the book.
The story itself was quite good, though for the most part it can be codified down into major political fantasy archetypes. Regardless, it was still entertaining, and save for a lull in the middle it moved along quickly. There was one particularly neat aspect: I felt like most books would have stretched the first half of the book longer, and ended it at the major plot turning point near the middle of the book. AMoT kept that first half more condensed instead, and moved along from said Big Plot Point into a whole second chunk of story. It was kind of cool, and definitely shook up what I expect from the standard “trilogy” breakdown. I’m really interested to see where book 2 goes.
I do have one serious gripe about the plot: without being too revealing, the “big twist” at the end put a sour note on the entire book for me. I felt like it broke a couple of characterizations, lacked motivation, and was included more as a way to make the reader want book 2, than as a well considered story progression. Honestly if not for the last few pages the tone of this review would have been much more positive overall – but finishing that way put me in a grumpy place.
Regardless, for all of the negatives I found to harp on, I did enjoy A Magic of Twilight. I may not run out and buy the sequel immediately, but I’ll be looking to it to tide me over until the next Jennifer Fallon book makes it to US shores.
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