The Rook (Daniel O'Malley)
Sep. 7th, 2013 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSeveral people recommended the Rook as British urban fantasy and when I'd heard enough different people recommend it, I decided I had to read it. I enjoyed it an awful lot, although I was left with a feeling that not enough had actually happened by the end.
Premise
Myfanwy Thomas has lost her memory. She discovers she was an functionary in a bureaucratic magic-regulation organisation, with various archaic traditions such as titles being modelled on a chess board.
Letters from her past self instruct her on playing the role of her previous self, whilst attempting to identify her assassin.
What I loved
The world building. The Chequey Court rings really true as a mixture of pragmatism and tradition, there's nothing you think "wouldn't they just change that", but a lot of things that are a bit odd, just like an old university or an old government department, etc.
The politics between the major officers of the court. This is blessedly non-simplistic; there are eight major officers of the court including Myfanwy, all of whom are somewhat creepy and none of whom are automatically sympathetic, although many of whom are nice, or competent, or well-meaning, or some (but not all) at once. My one objection is that the various tensions never really matter except for discovering who had Myfanwy assassinated.
Ditto the international politics.
The relationships between Myfanwy and other characters who are not major officers of the court.
What I didn't like as much
I got to the end with a feeling that not that much had happened. Everything that did happen was good, but it was near the end of the book before Myfanwy finished reading the profiles of the rest of the court characters, which made each an interesting revelation, but I was screaming, "forget the day job, find half an hour to read about the major players IMMEDIATELY ON THE FIRST DAY". And someone was a traitor, and she uncovered them, and was wrong footed, and then eventually resolved the situation. There wasn't much mystery or suspense other than "here's a question, wait 400 pages, there's an answer"
Conclusion
However, I would definitely read it, and would buy the sequel sight-unseen, so that's fairly positive.
Premise
Myfanwy Thomas has lost her memory. She discovers she was an functionary in a bureaucratic magic-regulation organisation, with various archaic traditions such as titles being modelled on a chess board.
Letters from her past self instruct her on playing the role of her previous self, whilst attempting to identify her assassin.
What I loved
The world building. The Chequey Court rings really true as a mixture of pragmatism and tradition, there's nothing you think "wouldn't they just change that", but a lot of things that are a bit odd, just like an old university or an old government department, etc.
The politics between the major officers of the court. This is blessedly non-simplistic; there are eight major officers of the court including Myfanwy, all of whom are somewhat creepy and none of whom are automatically sympathetic, although many of whom are nice, or competent, or well-meaning, or some (but not all) at once. My one objection is that the various tensions never really matter except for discovering who had Myfanwy assassinated.
Ditto the international politics.
The relationships between Myfanwy and other characters who are not major officers of the court.
What I didn't like as much
I got to the end with a feeling that not that much had happened. Everything that did happen was good, but it was near the end of the book before Myfanwy finished reading the profiles of the rest of the court characters, which made each an interesting revelation, but I was screaming, "forget the day job, find half an hour to read about the major players IMMEDIATELY ON THE FIRST DAY". And someone was a traitor, and she uncovered them, and was wrong footed, and then eventually resolved the situation. There wasn't much mystery or suspense other than "here's a question, wait 400 pages, there's an answer"
Conclusion
However, I would definitely read it, and would buy the sequel sight-unseen, so that's fairly positive.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-07 12:22 pm (UTC)I got this because of Amazon's big loss-leading Kindle-sale last summer. I still haven't read everything, but I'm glad this was one of the ones I did read early on.