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3.17 AVERAGE
3.17 AVERAGE
A fairly decent book, but not all that special. It's along the lines of a Neil Gaiman or Tad Williams story, wherein Average Young-ish Person is thrown out of his or her Ordinary Life when he or she discovers that The World Is Not How It Seems, and that he or she is, in fact, Needed To Save The Day.
While I do enjoy that sort of story, this guy makes a bit of a hash out of it. The story is pretty well-paced and full of action, but it makes a lot of really obvious choices that seem ham-handed at times.
While I do enjoy that sort of story, this guy makes a bit of a hash out of it. The story is pretty well-paced and full of action, but it makes a lot of really obvious choices that seem ham-handed at times.
I've read this as part of my great Read Everything I Own but Haven't Read Yet pledge, which I'm hoping to make serious inroads into this year. We'll see...
I got this a number of years ago as part of a show bag at a Swancon. I had read some Williams before, but not much. Since then I have read large chunks of his SF, but - until now - none of his fantasy except for the Troubletwisters books with Garth Nix. (It's actually been a while since I read much fantasy at all, which is curious to realise.)
Williams clearly has a thing for twins. In this, the twins are mirrors of one another, down to one of them having his heart on the righthand side of his chest. Their names are Seth and Hadrian - and I'll admit to being a bit disappointed with the name choice, given that both lend themselves to some nice tricksy name-association, just not with each other. Moving on... Seth and Hadrian are on holidays in Europe. They end up travelling with a girl, Ellis, and then everything gets weird when one of them is stabbed. That's not the weird part, though - the weird part is the non-stabbed one waking up and realising that the world is very, very different from when he last had his eyes open. And then things just get worse. For both of the twins.
There are some really nice elements to this story. Overall I thought the twins' relationship was a well-developed one, nearly perfectly balanced between love and... not hatred, but perhaps despair at being tied to this same person in so many ways for so long. Occasionally I got a bit bored by the whinging, but perhaps that's teenagers for you. The cherry-picking of mythology and characters from all over the world was a nice touch - it certainly avoided being eurocentric, which is always nice to see, and plays into a bit of a Jungian idea of the great subconscious with these commons themes that can (maybe) be seen. And I especially loved that Hadrian's adventures mostly took place in a city - THE city, the great underlying city, what every city dreams of being. While I do love me some epic horse-riding and camping out, grand fantasy played out on city streets also has a lot of appeal.*
There are, though, some aspects that grated. Hadrian's absolute insistence on finding Ellis - and that people are willing to help - strained credibility: Sometimes the mashing of multiple mythologies did not gel for me, and the explanation of the Three Realms really didn't work for me. I can't explain why; I don't think it's my faith getting in the way, since it rarely does with this sort of fantasy (that is, the sort that's clearly playing with pagan ideas, rather than Crystal Dragon Jesus types).
I did finish it, which means I did enjoy it even if I didn't adore it. I own the second Books of the Cataclysm, The Blood Debt. While it's not next on my list, I will definitely be reading it at some point... and from there I'll see whether I get around to the other trilogy that this is actually a prequel to, the Books of the Change.
*Hmm. Do I need to read Lord of the Rings again sometime? I'm getting an itch...
I got this a number of years ago as part of a show bag at a Swancon. I had read some Williams before, but not much. Since then I have read large chunks of his SF, but - until now - none of his fantasy except for the Troubletwisters books with Garth Nix. (It's actually been a while since I read much fantasy at all, which is curious to realise.)
Williams clearly has a thing for twins. In this, the twins are mirrors of one another, down to one of them having his heart on the righthand side of his chest. Their names are Seth and Hadrian - and I'll admit to being a bit disappointed with the name choice, given that both lend themselves to some nice tricksy name-association, just not with each other. Moving on... Seth and Hadrian are on holidays in Europe. They end up travelling with a girl, Ellis, and then everything gets weird when one of them is stabbed. That's not the weird part, though - the weird part is the non-stabbed one waking up and realising that the world is very, very different from when he last had his eyes open. And then things just get worse. For both of the twins.
There are some really nice elements to this story. Overall I thought the twins' relationship was a well-developed one, nearly perfectly balanced between love and... not hatred, but perhaps despair at being tied to this same person in so many ways for so long. Occasionally I got a bit bored by the whinging, but perhaps that's teenagers for you. The cherry-picking of mythology and characters from all over the world was a nice touch - it certainly avoided being eurocentric, which is always nice to see, and plays into a bit of a Jungian idea of the great subconscious with these commons themes that can (maybe) be seen. And I especially loved that Hadrian's adventures mostly took place in a city - THE city, the great underlying city, what every city dreams of being. While I do love me some epic horse-riding and camping out, grand fantasy played out on city streets also has a lot of appeal.*
There are, though, some aspects that grated. Hadrian's absolute insistence on finding Ellis - and that people are willing to help - strained credibility:
Spoiler
HELLO, everyone ELSE appears to be dead, so how exactly are you planning on finding one probably-dead girl in the great uber-city? I was hoping right from the start that Ellis was going to turn out to be more than just a girl, and that all of the non-humans knew it, since that would excuse it to some extent. The first was correct but not the second, so my annoyance with that plot element still exists.I did finish it, which means I did enjoy it even if I didn't adore it. I own the second Books of the Cataclysm, The Blood Debt. While it's not next on my list, I will definitely be reading it at some point... and from there I'll see whether I get around to the other trilogy that this is actually a prequel to, the Books of the Change.
*Hmm. Do I need to read Lord of the Rings again sometime? I'm getting an itch...
Interesting and ambitious ideas betrayed by lazy, sloppy writing and execution.
There's a lot I want to like about this book. I am usually a sucker for what I think of as "Alice In Wonderland" type books -- ones where a protagonist is thrust into a world the rules of which they don't comprehend. You know the type -- Gaiman's Neverwhere is the one that springs to mind, but there are scores of examples across all kinds of media. That's what this is. Unfortunately, it's a big letdown.
The Crooked Letter is the first entry in Sean Williams' series and concerns itself with Hadrian and Seth, a pair of "mirror twins," or twins who are reflections of each other, right down to one of them having his heart on the wrong side of his chest. They are, of course, special and distinct from other twins, because blah blah blah plot device. (I have never heard of "mirror twins" and I assume the author made up the concept but I haven't bothered to check.) The book splits time between their perspectives as they attempt to stop the world from being completely destroyed.
Almost immediately, although I don't think it was intended, we learn to hate the protagonists, because both of them are irritating, whiny, immature babies. Along the way we meet a wide cast of otherworldly characters, whose primary functions are generally either to attempt to kill one of the protagonists or to keep other characters from doing so.
In classic bad book trope fashion, our would-be heroes "just know" things with alarming frequency. Sometimes events transpire the apparent importance of which is underscored via repeated references, yet are then not explored. Entire characters are introduced to no apparent purpose beyond cryptic mutterings. The climax contains a deus ex machina most notable for its blatancy. All of this is packaged in uninspired prose.
I really can't recommend this and don't intend to continue the series. Two stars for the strength of the ideas that do work.
There's a lot I want to like about this book. I am usually a sucker for what I think of as "Alice In Wonderland" type books -- ones where a protagonist is thrust into a world the rules of which they don't comprehend. You know the type -- Gaiman's Neverwhere is the one that springs to mind, but there are scores of examples across all kinds of media. That's what this is. Unfortunately, it's a big letdown.
The Crooked Letter is the first entry in Sean Williams' series and concerns itself with Hadrian and Seth, a pair of "mirror twins," or twins who are reflections of each other, right down to one of them having his heart on the wrong side of his chest. They are, of course, special and distinct from other twins, because blah blah blah plot device. (I have never heard of "mirror twins" and I assume the author made up the concept but I haven't bothered to check.) The book splits time between their perspectives as they attempt to stop the world from being completely destroyed.
Almost immediately, although I don't think it was intended, we learn to hate the protagonists, because both of them are irritating, whiny, immature babies. Along the way we meet a wide cast of otherworldly characters, whose primary functions are generally either to attempt to kill one of the protagonists or to keep other characters from doing so.
In classic bad book trope fashion, our would-be heroes "just know" things with alarming frequency. Sometimes events transpire the apparent importance of which is underscored via repeated references, yet are then not explored. Entire characters are introduced to no apparent purpose beyond cryptic mutterings. The climax contains a deus ex machina most notable for its blatancy. All of this is packaged in uninspired prose.
I really can't recommend this and don't intend to continue the series. Two stars for the strength of the ideas that do work.
Not engaging....DNF
One would think that with a world ending cataclysm, battles with evil forces, etc. this would be a compelling story. Yet I did not find it so compelling. I stuck with it for 40% of the way, but I'm just feeling no compunction to continue on. I don't particularly like either brother, and their whining and their demands. Therefor their journeys didn't matter to me. The crazy settings were occasionally interesting, but not enough to make me want to continue. So I did not finish. I'm giving up on Sean Williams' Cataclysm series. I liked a collection of his short stories. I'm hoping the next novel of his I pick up engages me.
One would think that with a world ending cataclysm, battles with evil forces, etc. this would be a compelling story. Yet I did not find it so compelling. I stuck with it for 40% of the way, but I'm just feeling no compunction to continue on. I don't particularly like either brother, and their whining and their demands. Therefor their journeys didn't matter to me. The crazy settings were occasionally interesting, but not enough to make me want to continue. So I did not finish. I'm giving up on Sean Williams' Cataclysm series. I liked a collection of his short stories. I'm hoping the next novel of his I pick up engages me.
Apparently I can't put half stars on here, but I would give this one a 3.5. It's a very ambitious series, the world and the rules and physics and imagination it took to come up with the Realms is astounding, and very, very creative. The one place where I think this novel falls down though is definitely in the characters. They're really more ciphers than people, which I GUESS makes sense given where this all ends up, but I'm not sure if I want to continue reading about the Twins. I mean, they're so boring that even the author got them mixed up at least once. I'm still going to give the next book a go, because I have been pretty spoiled with character studies lately, but really, no one character was really that compelling.
I wanted to love this. I adore all of Sean Williams books, and yet this one didn't grab me as much as the others have. I own the other ones, so I'll read on, and hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised.
Pyr sent this over to me quite a bit ago and I'm woefully behind in reviewing it. Thankfully this is the second to last title I have left. I liked the way THE CROOKED LETTER sounded with the mirror twins and all the different bits of mythology getting thrown into the book and it piqued my interest. Enter said amount of time later and I finally got around to reading it.
Initially I was a little put off by the thickness, mainly because I'm inherently put off by thick books because they're such a time commitment and I'm really bent on not DNFing books this year so if I ended up not being thrilled with it, well, that's one hell of a slog. Luckily the print is normal so it really didn't take me forever to read and it really got the point quickly. Within the first fifty pages the world's already gone a bit sideways but I didn't know the extent of it until a bit later. Not much later but beyond the fifty page mark. The book opens with a fight between the brothers that really sets up their relationship but then they're torn apart and you're forced to get to know them as individuals and they really do stand out from each other. So between the characters and the world it had my attention.
I really liked the world(s) Williams created and how familiar they were but were still foreign at the same time. The concept was that many people, after they died, went to the second realm where they experienced a new level of existence mutually exclusive to the first realm, or the one we live in. Earth's myths and legends were loosely based on the creatures and stories from the second realm and a lot of the facts were lost in translation because a lot of it just couldn't be translated. There are elements of the second realm that just don't transfer to the human one. The third realm is more of an afterlife as we know it, where if you die in the second that's where you go. And then there's the underworld and the semi-world that the Nail, who's trying to merge the first and second realms so he can wreak havoc on the worlds, occupies that exists in this kind of active limbo. It's not as complicated as I'm making it sound, if I'm even describing it correctly, but it's all incredibly detailed and there was never a moment where I couldn't picture what was going on in my head regardless of how foreign and fantastical the worlds were.
I also liked how individual Hadrian and Seth became over the course of the story and how Ellis, even with her twist, was still the Ellis that I kept seeing in flashbacks. Her personality never really deviated despite her transformation. And the same goes for Seth and Hadrian. They grew as characters but despite everything they were going through they remained individuals within a drastically changing world instead of bending to its will. They were all incredibly real and I was actually invested in their stories. I cared about them and I wanted to know where they ended up and whether their mission was successful or not.
The middle kind of sagged a bit, especially with Seth's story because he didn't seem to be moving at the same pace as Hadrian. His wheels were spinning more and his storyline was more about personal transformation and character development despite being in a whole new world. Hadrian's story was more plot-driven and since I prefer that kind of story I was a bit more endeared to his storyline than Seth's. There was a bit more action, less stalled travel and more adversarial encounters that, for me, made it more interesting.
Also I wish the editing were a touch better only because there were a couple of times where the brothers weren't kept straight. I would start reading a chapter and it would say it's about Seth to start only to have Hadrian's name pop up as a POV a couple paragraphs down. The book was really good about POV transitions so these were rather jarring. Especially since the brothers occupy two different worlds to have it start as one POV only to have it really be another had be wrenched from one world to another. Even more jarring. It happened enough to be noticeable (maybe twice) but nowhere near enough that it bothered me all that much.
THE CROOKED LETTER is a great blend of apocalyptic and fantasy that mixes a slew of mythology with the destruction of the world and isn't heavy-handed about it. The characters are some of the most authentic I've ever come across and while the middle is a little saggy, it's easy enough to get through with all that's going on. There's a lot here to appeal to a wide range of people with a myriad of different tastes. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves fantasy, especially, but if you're into the whole it's the end of the world as we know it, you might want to try it out too. It may surprise you.
Initially I was a little put off by the thickness, mainly because I'm inherently put off by thick books because they're such a time commitment and I'm really bent on not DNFing books this year so if I ended up not being thrilled with it, well, that's one hell of a slog. Luckily the print is normal so it really didn't take me forever to read and it really got the point quickly. Within the first fifty pages the world's already gone a bit sideways but I didn't know the extent of it until a bit later. Not much later but beyond the fifty page mark. The book opens with a fight between the brothers that really sets up their relationship but then they're torn apart and you're forced to get to know them as individuals and they really do stand out from each other. So between the characters and the world it had my attention.
I really liked the world(s) Williams created and how familiar they were but were still foreign at the same time. The concept was that many people, after they died, went to the second realm where they experienced a new level of existence mutually exclusive to the first realm, or the one we live in. Earth's myths and legends were loosely based on the creatures and stories from the second realm and a lot of the facts were lost in translation because a lot of it just couldn't be translated. There are elements of the second realm that just don't transfer to the human one. The third realm is more of an afterlife as we know it, where if you die in the second that's where you go. And then there's the underworld and the semi-world that the Nail, who's trying to merge the first and second realms so he can wreak havoc on the worlds, occupies that exists in this kind of active limbo. It's not as complicated as I'm making it sound, if I'm even describing it correctly, but it's all incredibly detailed and there was never a moment where I couldn't picture what was going on in my head regardless of how foreign and fantastical the worlds were.
I also liked how individual Hadrian and Seth became over the course of the story and how Ellis, even with her twist, was still the Ellis that I kept seeing in flashbacks. Her personality never really deviated despite her transformation. And the same goes for Seth and Hadrian. They grew as characters but despite everything they were going through they remained individuals within a drastically changing world instead of bending to its will. They were all incredibly real and I was actually invested in their stories. I cared about them and I wanted to know where they ended up and whether their mission was successful or not.
The middle kind of sagged a bit, especially with Seth's story because he didn't seem to be moving at the same pace as Hadrian. His wheels were spinning more and his storyline was more about personal transformation and character development despite being in a whole new world. Hadrian's story was more plot-driven and since I prefer that kind of story I was a bit more endeared to his storyline than Seth's. There was a bit more action, less stalled travel and more adversarial encounters that, for me, made it more interesting.
Also I wish the editing were a touch better only because there were a couple of times where the brothers weren't kept straight. I would start reading a chapter and it would say it's about Seth to start only to have Hadrian's name pop up as a POV a couple paragraphs down. The book was really good about POV transitions so these were rather jarring. Especially since the brothers occupy two different worlds to have it start as one POV only to have it really be another had be wrenched from one world to another. Even more jarring. It happened enough to be noticeable (maybe twice) but nowhere near enough that it bothered me all that much.
THE CROOKED LETTER is a great blend of apocalyptic and fantasy that mixes a slew of mythology with the destruction of the world and isn't heavy-handed about it. The characters are some of the most authentic I've ever come across and while the middle is a little saggy, it's easy enough to get through with all that's going on. There's a lot here to appeal to a wide range of people with a myriad of different tastes. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves fantasy, especially, but if you're into the whole it's the end of the world as we know it, you might want to try it out too. It may surprise you.