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A review by verkisto
Cloudbound by Fran Wilde
3.0
There are a lot of things Wilde does right with Cloudbound. For one, the first couple of chapters serve as a nice summary of what happened in Updraft, the first book in this trilogy, which is useful, since I last read that book over a year ago. Like that book, Cloudbound also wraps the story around some fascinating ideas and themes, which help to elevate what is, to me, a mediocre story, to something a little more interesting.
The book picks up a few months after the events of Updraft, and this time Wilde shifts the narration from Kirit to Nat, one of her oldest friends who wound up fighting her to help save the towers. To say their relationship is strained is being generous; there's a tremendous loss of trust between the two, and it drives their characters for the bulk of the book. Unfortunately, the characters didn't spring to life for me. Kirit is mostly a background character, with the focus shifting back to the troubles between the Spire and the towers, neither to which she belongs. She's an outcast, despite her role in bringing the corruption to the towers' attention, so she gets very little page-time in the book.
I don't find fault with Wilde shifting attention from one character to another. There are a lot of people in her Bone Universe, and it helps broaden the universe to show that it takes more than one hero to keep that world going. It's just that none of the other characters are as interesting as Kirit. She does a good job of creating a diverse cast of characters, and gives them proper motivations, but I couldn't get interested in them.
The other weird thing about the story is that it ought to have engaged me. Plot-wise, it was interesting, and expanded on what the Bone Universe is, but somehow I felt disconnected with it all. It reminded me a lot of the Craft Sequence, in that the narrative itself couldn't engage me, despite the wealth of great ideas within. I also noticed how Wilde uses sentence fragments a lot, I'm guessing for effect. Or because she felt it provided a narrative punch. (Yes, that's my attempt to show how she was using them.) For me, they were more distracting than anything else.
I'm not sure if reading Updraft would have made me more aware of these issues, since I listened to the audio production for that book. I get the feeling the sentence fragments would have been less obvious, but I'm not sure about the rest. I do know that I remember pieces of Updraft fairly vividly; time will tell if Cloudbound will stay with me as well.
As I was reading this book, I figured I might have been done with the series, but then she went and ended the story the way she did, and I get the feeling I'll be back around for book three. I know it's already out, but the stories didn't strike me as good enough to buy the books in hardcover, so I'll likely wait until the paperback is released to get caught up. If my library carried a copy, I'd get it from there, but as it is, I don't mind waiting. I have a lot of other books I'm more interested in reading right now, anyway.
The book picks up a few months after the events of Updraft, and this time Wilde shifts the narration from Kirit to Nat, one of her oldest friends who wound up fighting her to help save the towers. To say their relationship is strained is being generous; there's a tremendous loss of trust between the two, and it drives their characters for the bulk of the book. Unfortunately, the characters didn't spring to life for me. Kirit is mostly a background character, with the focus shifting back to the troubles between the Spire and the towers, neither to which she belongs. She's an outcast, despite her role in bringing the corruption to the towers' attention, so she gets very little page-time in the book.
I don't find fault with Wilde shifting attention from one character to another. There are a lot of people in her Bone Universe, and it helps broaden the universe to show that it takes more than one hero to keep that world going. It's just that none of the other characters are as interesting as Kirit. She does a good job of creating a diverse cast of characters, and gives them proper motivations, but I couldn't get interested in them.
The other weird thing about the story is that it ought to have engaged me. Plot-wise, it was interesting, and expanded on what the Bone Universe is, but somehow I felt disconnected with it all. It reminded me a lot of the Craft Sequence, in that the narrative itself couldn't engage me, despite the wealth of great ideas within. I also noticed how Wilde uses sentence fragments a lot, I'm guessing for effect. Or because she felt it provided a narrative punch. (Yes, that's my attempt to show how she was using them.) For me, they were more distracting than anything else.
I'm not sure if reading Updraft would have made me more aware of these issues, since I listened to the audio production for that book. I get the feeling the sentence fragments would have been less obvious, but I'm not sure about the rest. I do know that I remember pieces of Updraft fairly vividly; time will tell if Cloudbound will stay with me as well.
As I was reading this book, I figured I might have been done with the series, but then she went and ended the story the way she did, and I get the feeling I'll be back around for book three. I know it's already out, but the stories didn't strike me as good enough to buy the books in hardcover, so I'll likely wait until the paperback is released to get caught up. If my library carried a copy, I'd get it from there, but as it is, I don't mind waiting. I have a lot of other books I'm more interested in reading right now, anyway.