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storyorc's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Stellar action scenes. Wooding has the uncommon skill to get your heart pumping without a) losing sight of character, or b) confusing you. Even if you don't follow every individual maneuver, you have a clear enough idea of the flow of a battle to appreciate its highs and lows. As someone who has used many a Hollywood blockbuster action scenes as a bathroom break, I was delighted to find that the action scenes kept upping the stakes, revealing character, and introducing twists that made them more than just dogfight #3.
The pacing is a mad dash between action set pieces but there is the odd catch-your-breath conversation beat thrown in. In a world of airships, pirates, and daemons, I wouldn't want it any slower. There were instances of head-hopping in the middle of an already busy scene that could have used a paragraph break to spare me some confusion, however.
The trade-off for breakneck pacing is that only Frey, Crake, and Jez have any real page time for development. (And I mostly want Frey dead, but we'll get to that later.) Luckily, with the exception of the annoying idiot Pinn, thee generic members of the crew were fairly charming cardboard cutouts. Silo, in particular, was one of my favourites overall, thanks to his concept as the silent, hyper-competent engineer (and escaped slave to boot) despite only having a handful of lines and mostly existing to launder Frey's likeability.
And boy, did Darian Frey need it. I appreciate that his wolfish captain façade is dashed within his first chapters to reveal a trembling shell of a man and that we see him grow over the course of the novel but I dearly wish he'd died in this first chapter, leaving Crake and Jez thrust into the captaincy role.
A solid redemption arc has two things:
The pacing is a mad dash between action set pieces but there is the odd catch-your-breath conversation beat thrown in. In a world of airships, pirates, and daemons, I wouldn't want it any slower. There were instances of head-hopping in the middle of an already busy scene that could have used a paragraph break to spare me some confusion, however.
The trade-off for breakneck pacing is that only Frey, Crake, and Jez have any real page time for development. (And I mostly want Frey dead, but we'll get to that later.) Luckily, with the exception of the annoying idiot Pinn, thee generic members of the crew were fairly charming cardboard cutouts. Silo, in particular, was one of my favourites overall, thanks to his concept as the silent, hyper-competent engineer (and escaped slave to boot) despite only having a handful of lines and mostly existing to launder Frey's likeability.
And boy, did Darian Frey need it. I appreciate that his wolfish captain façade is dashed within his first chapters to reveal a trembling shell of a man and that we see him grow over the course of the novel but I dearly wish he'd died in this first chapter, leaving Crake and Jez thrust into the captaincy role.
A solid redemption arc has two things:
- Empathy for how a character became a piece of shit
- A reason to root for them becoming less of one
Frey just does the piece of shit part really, really well. He's casually misogynistic*, he's a coward, and he's willing to betray his crew. Every new piece of his backstory we learn shows him enacting one of these faults so spectacularly that you would need a mountain of injustice against him to generate enough empathy to balance it. His becoming less of a piece of shit also relies mostly on snippets of inner monologue about how somehow, somewhere along the line, he started to care for his crew. This is nowhere near as convincing as the repeated acts of not caring we've born witness to. I tip my hat to him for two moments surrounding the Ketty Jay's ignition codes, particularly with Jez, but they cannot outweigh the abject horror that is his past with the pirate bitch queen Trinica Dracken. We learn that he despises her for the very normal reason that she tried to kill herself when he left her at the altar and their unborn child didn't survive the attempt?? AFTER WHICH, she reveals she had to endure rape and whore herself out to advance in the world of pirates. And what does our rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold say to that? He calls her a ghoul and whines internally about how she's not pretty anymore. That ghoul is a kinder soul than me for not shooting him on the spot. To pull off a character this awful would require so much more charisma than just being told he is hot - or at least for him to be fucked up in a more interesting way (like Crake!).
One aspect of the ending struck me as rather unpiratey too. Shockingly, I found myself agreeing with Pinn that helping the cops destroy the pirate haven was no bueno. 100 pirate captains in one place and y'all can't think of a way to screw over the bad guys AND the navy? At least when Captain Jack Sparrow allied with the British, he had plans within plans.
As a final personal insult to myself, the book ends with instructions for how to play this world's version of poker. I'm someone who adores Geralt, yet any NPC who mentions Gwent is dead to me, and they want me to play a card game where drawing a single bad card can void basically any hand? (This is not a serious criticism, enjoy your games of Rake, it just made me laugh.)
On the whole, it delivered strongly on the airship front (lots of cool names for different classes of vehicle and allusions to how they're built), strong on the outlaw front (schemes galore), and the dash of occultism really flavoured up what was already a strong setting. However, if you're looking for a well-developed found family crew, watch Firefly or Guardians of the Galaxy instead, if you want a corrupt, grimy shipping world with less sexism, play Dishonored, and if you're looking for airship adventures with a less shit main character, read Airborn & Skybreaker.
*see my content warnings for details
One aspect of the ending struck me as rather unpiratey too. Shockingly, I found myself agreeing with Pinn that
As a final personal insult to myself, the book ends with instructions for how to play this world's version of poker. I'm someone who adores Geralt, yet any NPC who mentions Gwent is dead to me, and they want me to play a card game where drawing a single bad card can void basically any hand? (This is not a serious criticism, enjoy your games of Rake, it just made me laugh.)
On the whole, it delivered strongly on the airship front (lots of cool names for different classes of vehicle and allusions to how they're built), strong on the outlaw front (schemes galore), and the dash of occultism really flavoured up what was already a strong setting. However, if you're looking for a well-developed found family crew, watch Firefly or Guardians of the Galaxy instead, if you want a corrupt, grimy shipping world with less sexism, play Dishonored, and if you're looking for airship adventures with a less shit main character, read Airborn & Skybreaker.
*see my content warnings for details
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Child abuse
Moderate: Abortion, Rape, and Suicide attempt
Minor: Homophobia
Keep in mind this book was published in 2009 when setting your expectations for the levels of misogyny, racism, and homophobia. The crew has one woman. She is extremely competent, her "boyish" are suggested to go hand-in-hand with that competency, and she explicitly
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