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minuteye's review
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
hawisher's review
2.0
I started this book prepared to love it. I knew the world Hodgell built was inventive and clever, that the characters were familiar without being cliche, and that Hodgell was neither squeamish nor overly brutal in her writing. What I did not know was that the prose was clunky, especially at the beginning; the dialogue somewhat wooden; and—worst of all—the pacing was terrible.
This applies both at the level of individual scenes and at the level of the story as a whole. For an example of the latter, without a single moment of down-time, Jame:
* accomplishes a daring and unprecedented theft,
* is approached by two new and somewhat mysterious characters, one of them unrelated to the theft,
* discovers the stolen goods conceal a dangerous secret,
* returns to the scene of the crime and reveals the secret (in the span of a half-page without even giving the audience time to wonder what secret could be so important),
* discovers that a hanger-on has committed suicide, partially because of her,
* visits the family of the hanger-on and breaks the news to them, andis attacked by some mysterious and shadowy force as she is leaving the family's home.
That's where I am right now, almost halfway through. There are other examples, but none so egregious. I think the goal of this pacing is to evoke a breathless and frantic mood, but the effect instead is to annoy me.
It has the feel of a disorganized, hasty account of a long vacation: "well, first we went snorkeling, and then we went skiing, and after that we went sailing, and then—" Hodgell wants so badly to fit all of these clever setpieces into her story, but she crushes them together so forcefully that they are obscured, becoming part of an undifferentiated mass.
I've become so frustrated with the pacing that I'm going to post this review now. If this were a standalone novel, or if I hadn't heard so many good things about the rest of the series, I would abandon ship.
As it is, I'm just going to hope that the next book is better.
This applies both at the level of individual scenes and at the level of the story as a whole. For an example of the latter, without a single moment of down-time, Jame:
* accomplishes a daring and unprecedented theft,
* is approached by two new and somewhat mysterious characters, one of them unrelated to the theft,
* discovers the stolen goods conceal a dangerous secret,
* returns to the scene of the crime and reveals the secret (in the span of a half-page without even giving the audience time to wonder what secret could be so important),
* discovers that a hanger-on has committed suicide, partially because of her,
* visits the family of the hanger-on and breaks the news to them, and
That's where I am right now, almost halfway through. There are other examples, but none so egregious. I think the goal of this pacing is to evoke a breathless and frantic mood, but the effect instead is to annoy me.
It has the feel of a disorganized, hasty account of a long vacation: "well, first we went snorkeling, and then we went skiing, and after that we went sailing, and then—" Hodgell wants so badly to fit all of these clever setpieces into her story, but she crushes them together so forcefully that they are obscured, becoming part of an undifferentiated mass.
I've become so frustrated with the pacing that I'm going to post this review now. If this were a standalone novel, or if I hadn't heard so many good things about the rest of the series, I would abandon ship.
As it is, I'm just going to hope that the next book is better.
elusivity's review
2.0
The city of Tai-tastigon, mysterious as it is, fails to draw me in. It forms no shape in my mind's eye, and slips like shadows from my dreams' landscape.
The main character, Jame, mysterious as she is, with cryptic memories sprouting like weeds from her brain, a thief incomparably skilled yet honorable, a being of as-yet-undiscovered powers, fails to form as a coherent person. Sometimes she is tortured. The next instant, she is carefree and joking. No transition between these two states.
The tone of this novel is confusing. Some passages describes darkness and misery. Others, mere fluffy everyday nonsense. It does not seem to matter that people die and gods are wrathful and houses fall and burn. These leave no mark on the characters, and I am not moved either.
Many characters have highlighted cryptic, quirky personalities, yet have no real impact on the plot line. I am left scratching my head. Why did abc spend all this time plotting cryptically, yet nothing comes out of it but...this? Why did xyz exchange long probing gazes all that time, and nothing results but...that?
Finally, and worst of all, this novel is in serious need of a single, good villain. Result: an underwhelming climax.
However, the Kencyr mythology seems quite interesting. I will move on to the next book in this series, and hope that is a better read!
The main character, Jame, mysterious as she is, with cryptic memories sprouting like weeds from her brain, a thief incomparably skilled yet honorable, a being of as-yet-undiscovered powers, fails to form as a coherent person. Sometimes she is tortured. The next instant, she is carefree and joking. No transition between these two states.
The tone of this novel is confusing. Some passages describes darkness and misery. Others, mere fluffy everyday nonsense. It does not seem to matter that people die and gods are wrathful and houses fall and burn. These leave no mark on the characters, and I am not moved either.
Many characters have highlighted cryptic, quirky personalities, yet have no real impact on the plot line. I am left scratching my head. Why did abc spend all this time plotting cryptically, yet nothing comes out of it but...this? Why did xyz exchange long probing gazes all that time, and nothing results but...that?
Finally, and worst of all, this novel is in serious need of a single, good villain. Result: an underwhelming climax.
However, the Kencyr mythology seems quite interesting. I will move on to the next book in this series, and hope that is a better read!
kellswitch's review
5.0
I found the world this book was based in fascinating, very layered and realistically written, it felt like a world that could really exist.
As much as I love this book and am haunted by the imagery within it, it's not one I can read very often, the world is dark, the people in it are dark, there are very, very few bright spots in it or just nice people. This works well for this book as bright and cheerful really wouldn't fit in this world, but it does make it a title I have to be in the right mood to read again. Though I find I don't need to reread it very often as the images stay with me for a long, long time afterwords, even now typing this I can re-imagine the mood of the book and imagery as much as if I had just read it.
As much as I love this book and am haunted by the imagery within it, it's not one I can read very often, the world is dark, the people in it are dark, there are very, very few bright spots in it or just nice people. This works well for this book as bright and cheerful really wouldn't fit in this world, but it does make it a title I have to be in the right mood to read again. Though I find I don't need to reread it very often as the images stay with me for a long, long time afterwords, even now typing this I can re-imagine the mood of the book and imagery as much as if I had just read it.
pjdoolittle's review
5.0
Fantastic!! Leads you to expect the rest of the Kencyrath series to be equally as good, which it is not!
annasirius's review
3.0
2.7
This novel calls many elements its own that make it - considering it's date of first publication - a surprisingly fresh read and should elevate it quickly to my top ten. Unfortunately, the writer was ambitious, as the blurps suggest, but to me she was not yet successful in realising her ambitions. Too often, I simply do not know why the main character, Jame, does what she does. E.g., she plans to leave the town as soon as the mountain passes clear - and yet she enters into an apprenticeship (a long-term commitment) that goes against all her deeply rooted religious beliefs. There is not much time spent on explaining what she finds fascinating about becoming a thief. Everytime Jame tries to figure out something about her people's past or religious beliefs, I feel entirely left in the dark: the author never provides the reader with any knowledge, any hints, in advance that would make Jame's heureka-moments enlightening. There are a bunch of characters in the book for which I needed to draw up a list to even remember who is who. Some of them have been given some detail to make them mildly exciting, but I didn't really bond with any. Bane is supposed to be the big, dark antagonist, but his characterisation as 'the guy who kills little boys sadistically for amusement' in absence of any other details is just clumsy. His helping Jame once is later called 'their uneasy friendship' (or some such thing) - to me, the two never established a relationship at all, and thus Jame's actions to provoke him make little sense to me.
In short, I think there is a lot of good material here, but it is not developed properly, leaving the story half raw and losing me on the way.
This novel calls many elements its own that make it - considering it's date of first publication - a surprisingly fresh read and should elevate it quickly to my top ten. Unfortunately, the writer was ambitious, as the blurps suggest, but to me she was not yet successful in realising her ambitions. Too often, I simply do not know why the main character, Jame, does what she does. E.g., she plans to leave the town as soon as the mountain passes clear - and yet she enters into an apprenticeship (a long-term commitment) that goes against all her deeply rooted religious beliefs. There is not much time spent on explaining what she finds fascinating about becoming a thief. Everytime Jame tries to figure out something about her people's past or religious beliefs, I feel entirely left in the dark: the author never provides the reader with any knowledge, any hints, in advance that would make Jame's heureka-moments enlightening. There are a bunch of characters in the book for which I needed to draw up a list to even remember who is who. Some of them have been given some detail to make them mildly exciting, but I didn't really bond with any. Bane is supposed to be the big, dark antagonist, but his characterisation as 'the guy who kills little boys sadistically for amusement' in absence of any other details is just clumsy. His helping Jame once is later called 'their uneasy friendship' (or some such thing) - to me, the two never established a relationship at all, and thus Jame's actions to provoke him make little sense to me.
In short, I think there is a lot of good material here, but it is not developed properly, leaving the story half raw and losing me on the way.
expendablemudge's review
4.0
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In the first book of the Kencyrath, Jame, a young woman missing her memories, struggles out of the haunted wastes into Tai-tastigon, the old, corrupt, rich and god-infested city between the mountains and the lost lands of the Kencyrath.
Jame's struggle to regain her strength, her memories, and the resources to travel to join her people, the Kencyrath, drag her into several relationships, earning affection, respect, bitter hatred and, as always, haunting memories of friends and enemies dead in her wake.
My Review: I read this 35-year-old fantasy novel because a good LibraryThing friend of mine ran a group read of it. She contended that the book was underfamous and underappreciated. I don't know about you, but I'd say any first-in-series book that's followed by eight others (to date) set in the same universe, and which has an 816 page fandom wiki, isn't exactly a concealed target.
Still.
Reading older books in the speculative fiction genre is an education in revised expectations and their invisibility until challenged. Modern fantasy nonillionologies, each volume a minimum of a jillion pages densely packed with made-up language vocabulary and/or Randomly capitalized normal Words that indicate they're being used as something More Than their mundane meaning, are now the minimum standard. This book predates that trend. As a result, its brevity can feel...unfinished...to a 21st century sensibility. There were many, many moments that the author moved through hastily or simply glided past entirely that would, in modern times, be entire novels.
I've complained about book bloat and editing fails so often and so publicly that I expect someone will quite soon point this out with a smug "gotcha!" of some sort. To those legions of carping natterers, I say "oh shut up" and remind them that 1) consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and 2) there's such a thing as a happy medium.
I'm not a huge consumer of fantasy novels at the best of times because magic makes me itch. It seems so nonsensical, so counter to the realities of physical laws under which we live; it flies in the face of experiential existence; but it satisfies a deep need in many people, just not me. Also, almost always, the protagonist is An Exceptional Adolescent (usually female), and that's very much not my favorite kind of person. Adolescence stank, and so do adolescents. Just not where I want to be, or to stay for any length of time.
This novel's magical system got in under my radar because it feels to me, like the magic in [a:Kai Ashante Wilson|7022361|Kai Ashante Wilson|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png]'s marvelous Africa-set fantasy stories, as though any second we're going to be told that it's a form of technology we don't recognize as such. I can hang with that. Most of what the main character does isn't terribly magical, and the city of Tai-Tastigon itself is the source of the overall magic. We're teased with the notion of the city's magic being the reason there are so many gods in it; in fact, there's a truly delicious idea that temples to the gods are actually ways for the mundane people to *trap* the gods, to limit their scope for activity, instead of mere places of worship.
Jame, our main character, even targets one of these gods in an experiment to test the limits of its power. She causes the god to lose its worshipers in the process, and the results prove to Jame that there is something very hinky about the way the gods function. This subplot is played for comedy, but I was happy to note that the very real consequences for this god and its priest were later sources of shame and remorse for Jame. She goes out of her way to fix the damage she's done, and in the process discovers an amazing library of knowledge that this god's temple has hidden for ages. It is one of the wonderful things about the tapestry of Tai-Tastigon created by Author Hodgell.
The city and its quirks, its societal and legal peculiarities, are incredibly enough left to one side as soon as they're revealed! Inconceivable, and that word does mean what I think it means, in today's publishing world. I was intrigued by the Cloudies, a subset of society that's decided to take to the rooftops and not touch the ground: whence came they, what do they do for a living, how come they're not subject to groundling law, and so on and so forth. Never answered. Never addressed. The Thieves' Guild that Jame enters without the smallest tiniest bit of effort on her part is an entire multi-volume storytelling universe! The history that Jame barely skates over with her sort of accidental Thieves' Guild master, one Penari the ancient master thief, is another multi-volume series of novels. I am all for rich texture in a story, and I got it here, but there are way too many delicious side trails that lead nowhere in this book.
At the end of the book came my personal biggest disappointment as Jame left Tai-Tastigon for parts unknown. This was inevitable, given the fact that she enters the city from parts only slightly less unknown and for reasons utterly unclear and unclarified. This is a fantasy novel, and the first in a series. Of course there will be a quest, and of course it will lead away from any one location. That doesn't make me any happier about it. The textures of Tai-Tastigon's tapestry are involving and exciting, and I'd like to stay here please.
Which is how I know Author Hodgell created a wonderful thing in this book, and why it's no real surprise that her fantasy universe has spawned an 816-page wiki. She understands her readers' need to feel immersed and invested in more than a simple, surface-gleaming world. She delivers those goods. My various dissatisfactions with the execution of this tale aside, I admire her ability and her vision. I won't continue reading the series because I'm less interested in Jame than I am in Tai-Tastigon, but I will likely pick up any future book that returns to this setting.
The Publisher Says: In the first book of the Kencyrath, Jame, a young woman missing her memories, struggles out of the haunted wastes into Tai-tastigon, the old, corrupt, rich and god-infested city between the mountains and the lost lands of the Kencyrath.
Jame's struggle to regain her strength, her memories, and the resources to travel to join her people, the Kencyrath, drag her into several relationships, earning affection, respect, bitter hatred and, as always, haunting memories of friends and enemies dead in her wake.
My Review: I read this 35-year-old fantasy novel because a good LibraryThing friend of mine ran a group read of it. She contended that the book was underfamous and underappreciated. I don't know about you, but I'd say any first-in-series book that's followed by eight others (to date) set in the same universe, and which has an 816 page fandom wiki, isn't exactly a concealed target.
Still.
Reading older books in the speculative fiction genre is an education in revised expectations and their invisibility until challenged. Modern fantasy nonillionologies, each volume a minimum of a jillion pages densely packed with made-up language vocabulary and/or Randomly capitalized normal Words that indicate they're being used as something More Than their mundane meaning, are now the minimum standard. This book predates that trend. As a result, its brevity can feel...unfinished...to a 21st century sensibility. There were many, many moments that the author moved through hastily or simply glided past entirely that would, in modern times, be entire novels.
I've complained about book bloat and editing fails so often and so publicly that I expect someone will quite soon point this out with a smug "gotcha!" of some sort. To those legions of carping natterers, I say "oh shut up" and remind them that 1) consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and 2) there's such a thing as a happy medium.
I'm not a huge consumer of fantasy novels at the best of times because magic makes me itch. It seems so nonsensical, so counter to the realities of physical laws under which we live; it flies in the face of experiential existence; but it satisfies a deep need in many people, just not me. Also, almost always, the protagonist is An Exceptional Adolescent (usually female), and that's very much not my favorite kind of person. Adolescence stank, and so do adolescents. Just not where I want to be, or to stay for any length of time.
This novel's magical system got in under my radar because it feels to me, like the magic in [a:Kai Ashante Wilson|7022361|Kai Ashante Wilson|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png]'s marvelous Africa-set fantasy stories, as though any second we're going to be told that it's a form of technology we don't recognize as such. I can hang with that. Most of what the main character does isn't terribly magical, and the city of Tai-Tastigon itself is the source of the overall magic. We're teased with the notion of the city's magic being the reason there are so many gods in it; in fact, there's a truly delicious idea that temples to the gods are actually ways for the mundane people to *trap* the gods, to limit their scope for activity, instead of mere places of worship.
Jame, our main character, even targets one of these gods in an experiment to test the limits of its power. She causes the god to lose its worshipers in the process, and the results prove to Jame that there is something very hinky about the way the gods function. This subplot is played for comedy, but I was happy to note that the very real consequences for this god and its priest were later sources of shame and remorse for Jame. She goes out of her way to fix the damage she's done, and in the process discovers an amazing library of knowledge that this god's temple has hidden for ages. It is one of the wonderful things about the tapestry of Tai-Tastigon created by Author Hodgell.
The city and its quirks, its societal and legal peculiarities, are incredibly enough left to one side as soon as they're revealed! Inconceivable, and that word does mean what I think it means, in today's publishing world. I was intrigued by the Cloudies, a subset of society that's decided to take to the rooftops and not touch the ground: whence came they, what do they do for a living, how come they're not subject to groundling law, and so on and so forth. Never answered. Never addressed. The Thieves' Guild that Jame enters without the smallest tiniest bit of effort on her part is an entire multi-volume storytelling universe! The history that Jame barely skates over with her sort of accidental Thieves' Guild master, one Penari the ancient master thief, is another multi-volume series of novels. I am all for rich texture in a story, and I got it here, but there are way too many delicious side trails that lead nowhere in this book.
At the end of the book came my personal biggest disappointment as Jame left Tai-Tastigon for parts unknown. This was inevitable, given the fact that she enters the city from parts only slightly less unknown and for reasons utterly unclear and unclarified. This is a fantasy novel, and the first in a series. Of course there will be a quest, and of course it will lead away from any one location. That doesn't make me any happier about it. The textures of Tai-Tastigon's tapestry are involving and exciting, and I'd like to stay here please.
Which is how I know Author Hodgell created a wonderful thing in this book, and why it's no real surprise that her fantasy universe has spawned an 816-page wiki. She understands her readers' need to feel immersed and invested in more than a simple, surface-gleaming world. She delivers those goods. My various dissatisfactions with the execution of this tale aside, I admire her ability and her vision. I won't continue reading the series because I'm less interested in Jame than I am in Tai-Tastigon, but I will likely pick up any future book that returns to this setting.
coffeeandink's review
4.0
2020 reread in preparation for [b:By Demons Possessed|42201631|By Demons Possessed (Kencyrath, #9)|P.C. Hodgell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1545577284l/42201631._SY75_.jpg|65814153].
aimee70807's review
2.0
Life's too short to keep reading books that don't suck you in by page 50....
assaphmehr's review
5.0
This is another book I remembered very fondly from my teenagehood (I even had a limited-edition hardcover), and recently re-read to see how it withstood the test of time (as well as comparing older and newer young-adult fantasy). I enjoyed it tremendously. Below are my thoughts for prospective readers.
What to Expect
A highly entertaining story, setting up the beginning of an epic fantasy cycle. Hodgell is slowly building the mythology around the people, characters, and places in the world. Hints and back stories are alluded to, giving tantalising tastes of things to come. Structurally, the story takes place in important episodes over the span of a year and a bit. We get to know Jame, her companions, and the fantastic city and world as events interweave and grow in tempo to conclusion.
Allow me to go on a tangent: there is the question of the thieves guild. While this is a fantasy trope (and in Hodgell's defence, she published this in 1982), one always wonders about how cities can support this. There is the basic predator/pray populations ratio that every biologist will tell you about. Conversely, large enough populations to support such a large guild would be expected to develop mechanisms to cohabitate in close proximity. Be that as it may, this is handled well in the novel.
What I liked
Hodgell's story-telling and world-building are top-notch, her story pacing is excellent, and she balances light and dark themes perfectly. I love the tantalising glimpses into Jame's past, and the slowly-building tension around her. One can't help but feel immersed in the story, love Jame's vibrancy, and wish to learn more.
What to be aware of
The story is more or less self-contained, but it's obvious at the end that it is merely the beginning of a larger cycle. This novel was published in 1982, and I imagine some modern readers might find the style a bit dated. The latest installment (book 8) was published last year -- 35 years on. I believe the series is still not complete, though I expect GRRM fans will likely not mind this in the least.
The city of Tai-tastigon is wonderful, but the rest of the series takes place in other locations. Style also changes between novels, although I find the writing consistently excellent (specific notes on each volume are coming as I re-read them).
Summary
A highly recommended series. This is epic fantasy done right, with perfect balance of light and dark, and excellent, slowly-building pacing. I'm off to re-read the rest of the series (and read those newer volumes for the first time). If you love fantasy, I strongly suggest you add God Stalk to your TBR pile.
--
[a:Assaph Mehr|14422472|Assaph Mehr|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1518065419p2/14422472.jpg], author of [b:Murder In Absentia|29500700|Murder In Absentia (Felix the Fox, #1)|Assaph Mehr|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1457914061s/29500700.jpg|46845657]: A story of Togas, Daggers, and Magic - for lovers of Ancient Rome, Murder Mysteries, and Urban Fantasy.
What to Expect
A highly entertaining story, setting up the beginning of an epic fantasy cycle. Hodgell is slowly building the mythology around the people, characters, and places in the world. Hints and back stories are alluded to, giving tantalising tastes of things to come. Structurally, the story takes place in important episodes over the span of a year and a bit. We get to know Jame, her companions, and the fantastic city and world as events interweave and grow in tempo to conclusion.
Allow me to go on a tangent: there is the question of the thieves guild. While this is a fantasy trope (and in Hodgell's defence, she published this in 1982), one always wonders about how cities can support this. There is the basic predator/pray populations ratio that every biologist will tell you about. Conversely, large enough populations to support such a large guild would be expected to develop mechanisms to cohabitate in close proximity. Be that as it may, this is handled well in the novel.
What I liked
Hodgell's story-telling and world-building are top-notch, her story pacing is excellent, and she balances light and dark themes perfectly. I love the tantalising glimpses into Jame's past, and the slowly-building tension around her. One can't help but feel immersed in the story, love Jame's vibrancy, and wish to learn more.
What to be aware of
The story is more or less self-contained, but it's obvious at the end that it is merely the beginning of a larger cycle. This novel was published in 1982, and I imagine some modern readers might find the style a bit dated. The latest installment (book 8) was published last year -- 35 years on. I believe the series is still not complete, though I expect GRRM fans will likely not mind this in the least.
The city of Tai-tastigon is wonderful, but the rest of the series takes place in other locations. Style also changes between novels, although I find the writing consistently excellent (specific notes on each volume are coming as I re-read them).
Summary
A highly recommended series. This is epic fantasy done right, with perfect balance of light and dark, and excellent, slowly-building pacing. I'm off to re-read the rest of the series (and read those newer volumes for the first time). If you love fantasy, I strongly suggest you add God Stalk to your TBR pile.
--
[a:Assaph Mehr|14422472|Assaph Mehr|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1518065419p2/14422472.jpg], author of [b:Murder In Absentia|29500700|Murder In Absentia (Felix the Fox, #1)|Assaph Mehr|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1457914061s/29500700.jpg|46845657]: A story of Togas, Daggers, and Magic - for lovers of Ancient Rome, Murder Mysteries, and Urban Fantasy.