Book Log 04/2015 - Jen Williams: The Copper Promise

I read excellent reviews of this book and really wanted to love it. Ultimately, I didn't engage as well as I'd hoped, though I found much to admire. Jen Williams' worldbuilding is excellent. Though the setting is medievalish, she builds a world in which the old gods and their power have been shut away. There are knights, mercenaries, taverns and lords, but it feels anything but generic.

I bounced off the characters, however. The three main ones are basically unlikeable in their selfish disregard for others.  Wydrin of Crosshaven, a hard-drinkin' hard-fightin' female fighter and her friend and companion, Sir Sebastian, a disgraced Knight of Ynnsmouth, who clings to the essence of the Order even though they kicked him out for something heinous, are chancers, mercenary adventurers living from hand to mouth and job to job. The trouble starts when Lord Frith employs them to see him safely into the dangerous underground labyrinth beneath the Citadel - a place from which few return. What could possibly go wrong?

I've never played Dungeons and Dragons, but the first part of this reads like a trip through the Dungeon and yes, there is a Dragon, though it's not your regular kind, this one's a god with a manufactured army of green women warriors, new-born into the world. Frith gets what he wants, in fact he gets more than he bargained for, but only by ignoring the needs of others. An unspeakable horror is released, and our heroes run in the opposite direction. Frith isn't interested in the horror, he's single-mindedly seeking revenge on the people who broke into his castle, killed his family and tortured him for the location of the family vault.

The rest of the book is straightforward quest narrative. They all have to face individual fears, Sebastian's dark secret is finally revealed, though it's well flagged up in advance (and it's not heinous at all). There are gains and losses and a few more gains until they are eventually in a position to do something about the problem they caused in the first place, though many people (thousands?) have already died because of it.

What I didn't know before reading it is that this book comprises four serialized novellas – Ghost of the Citadel, Children of the Fog, Prince of Wounds, and Upon the Ashen Blade. Had I known that in advance it might have accounted for the fragmentary nature which I found almost disorienting at times and is probably what prevented me from engaging as fully as I might have done.

What I did find fascinating were the scenes from the viewpoint of the individuals in the manufactured army as they gradually become self-aware. I could have done with a whole lot more of that kind of thing. they engaged my sympathy even though they were part of the murdering hoard they'd been 'born' to.

I read this in order to read The Iron Ghost, which I have as a review copy from Netgalley. I'm looking forward to finding out whether their adventures have changed Wydrin, Sebastian and Frith.

Movie of the Week: Into the Woods

I generally like musicals, but where does a musical stop and an opera begin? Into the Woods has lots of music, but no good songs and only one memorable (9 note) musical hook, which recurred. I confess I'm not a great Sondheim fan (you guessed, huh?). Having said that, the singing was good, especially since most of the participants were actors not usually known for singing roles.

The plot is an original strand about a baker and his wife (the surprisingly effective pairing of and impressive James Corden and Emily Blunt) who can't have a child until they've lifted a curse by collecting three items for the witch next door (Meryl Streep). Into this is twisted a collection of Grimms' fairy tales such as Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood (with a cameo by Johnny Depp as Mr Wolf). The fairy tales were all twisted, of course, deliciously so in some cases. (The prince who was raised to be charming but not sincere, for instance.

I've watched too many Dr Whos recently because I confess that when James Corden's baker eventually got his baby I had to woner whether its name was Stormageddon.