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wmhenrymorris's review against another edition
Another excellent entry in to the modern genre of fantasy with many of the hallmarks that the best authors -- Robin Hobb, George R.R. Martin, etc. -- bring (if you read much fantasy you should know what I mean). I love the characters in this novel and it's quite the compelling setting and the plot is rather delightful. And yet, there was a certain slackness of tensions and just the hint of flatness of writing that keeps me from ranking this up with Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet or Robin Hobb's Fool novels. So three and a half stars instead of four.
just_dave's review against another edition
3.0
A good first effort from the writer. The book suffered a little from too much exposition and not enough action, but it was still entertaining. I'm looking forward to the sequel.
bluehairedlibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
Within pages Scholes creates a full bodied universe with adversaries and heroes, though by the end you still might not know who is which. To set the scene, Scholes opens his debut novel with the event that will follow the characters around and set into motion the underlying shockwaves that carry forward the story for the next four hundred pages. Within the first 50 pages, Windwir is destroyed by some mystical force that destroys the entire city and the thousands of people within its borders. As the center of the Named Lands, Windwir acted as the seat of power for the Androfrancines, an order that collected knowledge from the “Old World” and maintained within the confines of the large library that made up most of the city. The Androfrancines act much like a religious order of our own world, except instead of peddling gods and religions, they seek to find and protect knowledge, leaking it out to the general public in slips and pieces as they think the general populace can handle it. In the destruction of Windwir, the world loses most of the knowledge of the old as well as the group that maintained peace within the world. As everyone attempts to figure out who could have caused such destruction, sides build towards inevitable war.
Even though the story bounced between view points with three or four characters telling the story through their eyes in each chapter, the novel flows effortlessly. Moving from one character to the next doesn’t jerk you out of the action or takes much adjustment because all of the characters are so well-developed. Even the characters that have awkward “fantasy” names that are not common in the real world have distinctive traits that soon turn them into individuals after being introduced. The story is centered around four distinctive voices with others leading detail as needed:
Rudolpfo – the gypsy king of the Nine Folds Forrest, an honorable man who prefers sticking to matters of his own territory, but seeks to honor his “kinclave” with the Androfrancine order
Jin Li Tam – a daughter of the house of Li Tam, a familial network that subtly attempts to affect change within the Named Lands, acts as a spy for her father
Neb – a teenage orphan of the Androfrancine order who was leaving Windwir with his father to enter the old world for research
Petronus – an old fisherman who is much more than he pretends to be with an emotional stake in the destruction of Windwir
Through their eyes, the story unfolds – war begins, mysteries unravel, loyalties change and somehow the mythology becomes more and more complicated as the entire world gets involved in the aftermath of the destruction of this one city.
Lamentation defeats the boundaries of genre classification. Yes, I compare it to epic fantasy, but at the same time there are mechoservitors – metal men used by the Androfrancine order for maintaining their library – and steam powered technology, magic seeping in through the cracks, and human drama reflected in the tribulations of a post-apocalyptic world as it falls apart. Though it begins in a slow steady pace that builds up a world almost as real as our own, Scholes has no hesitation in running at full speed, developing the world as the action powers the story along.
This is the first of a five novel series with the third book, Antiphon, coming out in September. There is no way any words of my own can justify how fantastic this book is. I highly recommend it and its sequel Canticle (review to follow tomorrow) to anyone who enjoys getting lost in well constructed, beautifully written worlds full of action, mystery and intrigue. This isn’t Lost. Questions get answered as often as they get asked, though theorizing and putting pieces of the puzzle together along with the main characters is part of the fun.
Even though the story bounced between view points with three or four characters telling the story through their eyes in each chapter, the novel flows effortlessly. Moving from one character to the next doesn’t jerk you out of the action or takes much adjustment because all of the characters are so well-developed. Even the characters that have awkward “fantasy” names that are not common in the real world have distinctive traits that soon turn them into individuals after being introduced. The story is centered around four distinctive voices with others leading detail as needed:
Rudolpfo – the gypsy king of the Nine Folds Forrest, an honorable man who prefers sticking to matters of his own territory, but seeks to honor his “kinclave” with the Androfrancine order
Jin Li Tam – a daughter of the house of Li Tam, a familial network that subtly attempts to affect change within the Named Lands, acts as a spy for her father
Neb – a teenage orphan of the Androfrancine order who was leaving Windwir with his father to enter the old world for research
Petronus – an old fisherman who is much more than he pretends to be with an emotional stake in the destruction of Windwir
Through their eyes, the story unfolds – war begins, mysteries unravel, loyalties change and somehow the mythology becomes more and more complicated as the entire world gets involved in the aftermath of the destruction of this one city.
Lamentation defeats the boundaries of genre classification. Yes, I compare it to epic fantasy, but at the same time there are mechoservitors – metal men used by the Androfrancine order for maintaining their library – and steam powered technology, magic seeping in through the cracks, and human drama reflected in the tribulations of a post-apocalyptic world as it falls apart. Though it begins in a slow steady pace that builds up a world almost as real as our own, Scholes has no hesitation in running at full speed, developing the world as the action powers the story along.
This is the first of a five novel series with the third book, Antiphon, coming out in September. There is no way any words of my own can justify how fantastic this book is. I highly recommend it and its sequel Canticle (review to follow tomorrow) to anyone who enjoys getting lost in well constructed, beautifully written worlds full of action, mystery and intrigue. This isn’t Lost. Questions get answered as often as they get asked, though theorizing and putting pieces of the puzzle together along with the main characters is part of the fun.
jayshay's review against another edition
2.0
This gets two stars from me cause it didn't convince me to read (or listen to) the next four books in the series. None of the characters were particularly compelling. They all suffered from high fantasy woodenness. Neb, the orphan boy is probably supposed to be the most sympathetic of the characters, but comes off as a whiner. These character deficits wouldn't matter if there was an interesting plot, but there weren't enough twists and turns to keep my interest. The city of Wind Wir? gets crisped by the baddie at the beginning of the book and then the good guys whack him down for the rest of the book. The anti-climatic final scene with the main baddie is at a trial. Perry Mason in the 1100s. Yes, there are hidden conspiracies and a greater evil, but those are back-loaded to the end of the book. Realistically an author has maybe fifty pages to hook a reader, I gave him 368 pages and Scholes still hadn't delivered for me.
That a man is shaped not only by his own choices, but the choices of those around him, to vaguely quote a character in the book, is a worthy theme, but it gets played out to a improbable lengths here with one character seemingly in complete control of another character's development and life course. This is the gimmick of an evil or not-so-good character being a genius seemingly in control of EVERYTHING that happens - there is no chance, no factors outside of this dude's control. I can buy magic and dragons and steam-punk robots, but this I just can't swallow. It's a symptom of an author who is being such a control freak that he squeezes the life out of his story.
Petronus (the wise old man, former Pope of the Androfrancine order) finishes his sermon with "...to dream in the Now." Which is kind of a groany little statement in itself. Much is made in the book of not looking back, of protecting the light, or on the other hand letting the light die, killing the light. Of using the light to read trashy sf stories late at night when you should be sleeping... I just couldn't make sense of all this talk. The monks in the book are protecting the light (knowledge from the old high tech civilization that blew itself up) but the light is also dangerous, so they are protecting the survivors from the light. Of course wouldn't some of this knowledge help improve the life of this medieval society? If it is at all like medieval Europe, the life expectancy must be pretty grim, there is probably a really high infant mortality rate. But the order is keeping the lid on this stuff or maybe just some of it? The problem is, how do you hold back the 'bad' knowledge and let the 'good' knowledge out? I don't know if this was really addressed. The issue of whether folks really want some paternalistic order holding back knowledge, presumably preventing fledgling scientists from redeveloping science isn't mentioned in this volume.
Then there is the group that wants to kill the light. Are they saying they want to flush all the knowledge? To they want to get rid of rationality as well? Go to some dream-ruled happy land with probably even less indoor plumbing and sanitation systems? A fantasy medieval world is fun to read about but I'd want to get my people to a better standard of living pretty quickly. Of course this is high fantasy so we're really only focusing on lords and ladies here. Me, I'd be peasant number four, the one with the nasty skin rash and a bad sounding cough.
The ideal of some characters by the end of this book is to not look to the past but to 'dream forward', but just what the heck does that mean? It is like some weird ass political slogan. Funnily, at the end of the book when there is talk about the tortures being put out of business this fantasy takes on a post-Bush, beginning-of-Obama kind of vibe. Perhaps reality will hit with volume two, but I'm not sticking around to find out. Especially after Rudolfo ends his final musing with "and he saw how a Lamentation could become a Hymn." (Don't know if the words were capitalized, they just sounded that way in the audio.) Scholes probably thought it was pretty clever getting the title of the current volume and the final volume in a neat little package. No, that is way way too cute and neat and precious. Stop it!
**I enjoyed Scholes' short story 'Summer in Paris, Light from the Sky' (which you can listen to at escapepod.org, it's #187). Any guy who can get you rooting for Hitler (in an alternate history) does have some saving graces.**
That a man is shaped not only by his own choices, but the choices of those around him, to vaguely quote a character in the book, is a worthy theme, but it gets played out to a improbable lengths here with one character seemingly in complete control of another character's development and life course. This is the gimmick of an evil or not-so-good character being a genius seemingly in control of EVERYTHING that happens - there is no chance, no factors outside of this dude's control. I can buy magic and dragons and steam-punk robots, but this I just can't swallow. It's a symptom of an author who is being such a control freak that he squeezes the life out of his story.
Petronus (the wise old man, former Pope of the Androfrancine order) finishes his sermon with "...to dream in the Now." Which is kind of a groany little statement in itself. Much is made in the book of not looking back, of protecting the light, or on the other hand letting the light die, killing the light. Of using the light to read trashy sf stories late at night when you should be sleeping... I just couldn't make sense of all this talk. The monks in the book are protecting the light (knowledge from the old high tech civilization that blew itself up) but the light is also dangerous, so they are protecting the survivors from the light. Of course wouldn't some of this knowledge help improve the life of this medieval society? If it is at all like medieval Europe, the life expectancy must be pretty grim, there is probably a really high infant mortality rate. But the order is keeping the lid on this stuff or maybe just some of it? The problem is, how do you hold back the 'bad' knowledge and let the 'good' knowledge out? I don't know if this was really addressed. The issue of whether folks really want some paternalistic order holding back knowledge, presumably preventing fledgling scientists from redeveloping science isn't mentioned in this volume.
Then there is the group that wants to kill the light. Are they saying they want to flush all the knowledge? To they want to get rid of rationality as well? Go to some dream-ruled happy land with probably even less indoor plumbing and sanitation systems? A fantasy medieval world is fun to read about but I'd want to get my people to a better standard of living pretty quickly. Of course this is high fantasy so we're really only focusing on lords and ladies here. Me, I'd be peasant number four, the one with the nasty skin rash and a bad sounding cough.
The ideal of some characters by the end of this book is to not look to the past but to 'dream forward', but just what the heck does that mean? It is like some weird ass political slogan. Funnily, at the end of the book when there is talk about the tortures being put out of business this fantasy takes on a post-Bush, beginning-of-Obama kind of vibe. Perhaps reality will hit with volume two, but I'm not sticking around to find out. Especially after Rudolfo ends his final musing with "and he saw how a Lamentation could become a Hymn." (Don't know if the words were capitalized, they just sounded that way in the audio.) Scholes probably thought it was pretty clever getting the title of the current volume and the final volume in a neat little package. No, that is way way too cute and neat and precious. Stop it!
**I enjoyed Scholes' short story 'Summer in Paris, Light from the Sky' (which you can listen to at escapepod.org, it's #187). Any guy who can get you rooting for Hitler (in an alternate history) does have some saving graces.**
judd's review against another edition
3.0
I finished it and it made my hour and a half long train commute go by faster but I think the series will be a victim of my unreasonably high standards currently set for fantasy series. I'm suffering from series-exhaustion and unless a book blows me away, I rarely move on to the second book.
If the book still resonates with me and I need a book to read on a long trip, I might very well pick it up and find out what happens next.
If the book still resonates with me and I need a book to read on a long trip, I might very well pick it up and find out what happens next.
richardwells's review against another edition
3.0
Brought to my attention by my favorite librarian (no, not Nancy Pearl,) who had put it on her "to read" list. It's not bad, not great, but not bad. I liked the characters, enjoyed the intrigue, and appreciated the intrigue over the swordplay - though that was interesting what with special forces equipped with Magick. The story has to do with a "doomsday" weapon fired by magick and a mechanical man that destroys a city, and the world's greatest library. It's all about the forces that brought the destruction about, and its repercussions, and it is amusing. It's a swords and sorcery meets steam-punk blend - light on the steam-punk. I even managed to handle the five character narrative line.
I jumped right to book 2, Canticle. It's going into the discard pile (where exactly is that on a Kindle?) I'm less than a hundred pages in, but the repetition has gotten to me, and the characters aren't resonating as much as in book one. I was a little wary as the pub. dates on each volume run closely together and I suspected a rush to print. The formatting of Canticle is the same as Lamentation (multi-character story line) which seems to stifle any forward motion.
All and still, Lamentation was fun, I just don't have time for more of the same. A hesitant three stars.
I jumped right to book 2, Canticle. It's going into the discard pile (where exactly is that on a Kindle?) I'm less than a hundred pages in, but the repetition has gotten to me, and the characters aren't resonating as much as in book one. I was a little wary as the pub. dates on each volume run closely together and I suspected a rush to print. The formatting of Canticle is the same as Lamentation (multi-character story line) which seems to stifle any forward motion.
All and still, Lamentation was fun, I just don't have time for more of the same. A hesitant three stars.
archergal's review against another edition
4.0
I liked this book quite a lot. I'd heard good things about it a couple of years ago,so when I saw it on Scribd, I wanted to read it.
The book starts with the catastrophic destruction of a city. Throughout the book, we find out more of the reasons why the city was destroyed, and the years-long machinations of the movers and shakers of the world.
I liked the characters and the societies, though I'm not sure I followed quite everything.
It's the only volume in the series on Scribd, so I'll have to look elsewhere for the other volumes. I think I probably will look for the others. I liked it that much. :)
The book starts with the catastrophic destruction of a city. Throughout the book, we find out more of the reasons why the city was destroyed, and the years-long machinations of the movers and shakers of the world.
I liked the characters and the societies, though I'm not sure I followed quite everything.
It's the only volume in the series on Scribd, so I'll have to look elsewhere for the other volumes. I think I probably will look for the others. I liked it that much. :)
tanguera's review against another edition
4.0
This story is so great, that I'm giving it four stars despite some serious issues I had with grammar and the characterization of Rudolfo. You can't just tell me Rudolfo is a fop, you have to show me, and I never saw it. All I saw was an amazing leader, a man driven to do the best he could for his kingdom and friends. Never did a I see a foolish man overly concerned with appearance or clothes. Never.
But even with that, this story is unique and marches along. From almost the beginning, I had to know who was behind the destruction of Wyndwir and why it happened.
But even with that, this story is unique and marches along. From almost the beginning, I had to know who was behind the destruction of Wyndwir and why it happened.
woodge's review against another edition
1.0
This the first in a proposed series of five books, this story begins shortly after the complete destruction of a central city of learning. The setting is somewhat medieval with splashes of steampunk. In fact, the Isaak of the series name is an automaton who emerged intact from the city's destruction. There's a bunch of incomprehensible foofarraw about ancient times and lost knowledge thrown about and several strangely named characters charging about with different agendas (Rudolfo, Jin Li Tam, Sethbert, Neb, Petronus, to name a few). But I found the story to be severely lacking in suspense. The level of interest I sustained was barely enough to keep turning pages. One important character was this guy who seems to be eight steps ahead of everyone else, hatching plans within plans, and annoyingly obtuse about what his motives are. I didn't end up caring much about any of the characters. I'll pass on the rest of the series.
pinggaines180's review against another edition
4.0
Scholes' debut novel is quite unique. The worldbuilding was excellent--think of a civilization that has grown up for thousands of years after at least one apocalypse, led by a religious order something like a secularized version of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. Scholes' characters exhibit layers of complexity in their motivations and actions, and a few were true standouts. The only downside for me was the occasional clumsy turn of phrase and scattered typos. The prose has moments of beauty and power, and I wanted the whole book to be written in that manner. Definitely good enough to continue the series.