Merlin's Keep

Merlin's Keep

By Madeleine Brent

Jani, the strange and lovely heroine, has been brought up in a remote region of the Himalayas in Tibet by a runaway English soldier. Both Jani’s past and that of her soldier protector are shrouded in a mystery that grows ever deeper for Jani when the foreign demon on a black horse comes from the south to take her away to a new and frightening world—a London orphanage. Later, when she moves on and finds the Woman in Red, Jani becomes one of the family in a Hampshire household. And it is here that her past is gradually uncovered. She becomes locked in a macabre struggle, long prophesied by the High Lama of her Tibetan youth, against the strange and terrifying powers of the Silver Man.

Merlin's Keep is still in the classic Brent style, but is a little bit less...action-filled, maybe? I say this about a book in which a young girl's protector dies in snow storm like, thirty pages in, and then she has to make it through diphtheria, orphanages, sexual harassment, poisonous snakes, sinister magicians (like real magic, not David Copperfield), dangerous trips through the Himalayas, hallucinations, tibetan bandits, snow leopards, and the East End of London.  But there's a lot less activity on our heroine's part - she is basically packed up and sent from place to place by other people for the entire book.  I think the only initiative she takes on her own steam is her trip to the East End, looking for her friend.

Brent sets this somewhere in the Himalayas, and is quite a bit vaguer on location than he/she was in Stormswift.  For example, they're not supposed to be in either Nepal or Tibet, but both are close by.  Namkhara is a place, but it's in West Bengal, too far east (ironically) to make much sense in context.  And "Chak Pass" seems made up.  It does seem like we spend less time in the foreign country than we usually do in Brent's books, which is too bad, since I was excited to  re-read this one because of my time out in Nepal.  Merlin's Keep also has a big supernatural element, which is also somewhat uncommon for Brent.  

I think the lack of action is part of the reason I don't really remember this one so well, and why it's not so much a favorite.  There's a big macguffin in the way of a precious gem which they need to steal, except that they're fated to steal it anyway, so it's not that much of a heist.  Overall, like I said, just not my favorite, plus I loved how hypocritical Jani was about the Silver Man's use of her friend in his magic spells, but Jani (TWICE) has him use it for her benefit too (first to find her friend, then to heal his blindness), so I guess you don't feel that bad about it, huh? And we're just going to ignore whatever her friend was doing in Jamaica to piss off a hoodoo practitioner, I guess.  And the vet is so weird, too, proposing to Jani because well, she's there, and this other woman he liked already got married, so may as well ask around.  Hmmmm, okay, Jan. 

Behind the Throne

Behind the Throne

By K.B. Wagers

Hail Bristol has made a name for herself as one of the most fearsome gunrunners in the galaxy. But she can't escape her past forever: twenty years ago, she was a runaway princess of the Indranan Empire. Now, her mother's people have finally come to bring her home.

But when Hail is dragged back to her Indrana to take her rightful place as the only remaining heir, she finds that trading her ship for a palace is her most dangerous move yet.

I.e. Hail is summoned to come back home as the prodigal heir after her sisters have been killed and her mother has space madness.  Once she gets back though, it's very clear that whoever killed her sisters wants to kill her too. Blah blah blah, evil cousin who has been "helping out" in Hail's absence set all this up to take control.  One aborted coup later, Hail is crowned empress.

This was somewhat less "in space" than originally anticipated - although it feels very much like a space sci-fi book, our main character, Hail, spends all but the first few chapters on her home planet. It started out interesting enough, a good hook of former-outlaw-turned-missing-princess, set in an Indian subcontinent-inspired world, but the follow through is lacking. 

First: there is a confusing number of players and names thrown at you, most of them appearing, or discussed, only briefly, so remembering and keeping track of the various people (and even whether they are loyal or disloyal) was difficult.  We spend the most time with two sarcastic but incredibly skilled "Trackers" cum bodyguards named Emmory and Zin, who are also indistinguishable from each other.  

Second: the plot, such as it is, is pretty much the obvious person, and everyone seems to acknowledge this fairly early on, yet the plotters still manage to stage a (short lived) coup.  I mean, Hail hates Ganda (with no explanation aside from, essentially, what an asshole she was twenty years ago) and it turns out Ganda is definitely plotting for the throne, and no one is even watching her! Let's think about, I don't know, keeping tabs on the people you know are scheming behind your back.  And also, Emmory/Zin's decision not to tell Hail that another bodyguard, Nal is almost definitely a traitor too, until Hail gets mad and fires her for some other reason? Like, maybe Hail knowing who she can or cannot trust (and who might be used to plant misinformation for the other side) would be a pretty useful and important thing to know.  But instead we get Hail conjuring up the leader of the resistance (who is conveniently not trying to kill her) in a matter of minutes and having a heart to heart about how she's coping with her sister's death.  Is this how the Indranan government is normally run?  If so, I'm somewhat sympathetic to Ganda.  This seems both unskilled and incredibly messy. 

Third: I just did not care very much about any of the characters or what happened to them.  Hail's sisters and niece are murdered before the book begins, and we come back to find her mother being poisoned, and honestly, I assume (and Hail tells us) that she loved her family, but there's very little connection that we get to see as readers: no flashbacks, no mementos, just a distance that, frankly, twenty years of never contacting your family would realistically give you.  But it creates a problem because that sense of defending a home isn't there: all these people are barely acquaintances, we don't revisit any childhood spots, Hail could have been running a long con and had the same emotional attachment to the outcome. 

I don't think it's bad, per se, I just struggled to stay interested and finish it.  It took me weeks to finish and I had to renew my loan twice.  I hope the next one is good - I have two more to finish before I can get to another light read, and I'm cranky about it.

20: A Book Set In Space