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A review by aphelia88
The Gift by Patrick O'Leary
1.0
Short review: Don't bother wasting your time!
There's very few books I can say that about unequivocally, but this is one of them. I am a firm believer that all stories have merit but this one didn't connect with me at all. I nearly put it down twice, and in the end I should have - I wanted my time back.
This book has been on my radar for years, due to the striking cover art by Bonnie Leon (for a long time, I thought it was by Thomas Canty as it is very much in his style) and the comparisons to one of my all-time favourite authors, [a:Patricia A. McKillip|25|Patricia A. McKillip|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1220752490p2/25.jpg].
The glowing Locus review quoted on the inside front cover specially compares this to three books: [a:Gene Wolfe|23069|Gene Wolfe|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556979018p2/23069.jpg]'s [b:Peace|60213|Peace|Gene Wolfe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1391052690l/60213._SY75_.jpg|58579] (which I haven't read, and so cannot comment on), McKillip's [b:The Book of Atrix Wolfe|77353|The Book of Atrix Wolfe|Patricia A. McKillip|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1170900098l/77353._SY75_.jpg|1105994] (one of my faves by her) and [a:Ursula K. Le Guin|874602|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1244291425p2/874602.jpg]'s [b:Tehanu|13661|Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924581l/13661._SY75_.jpg|2902890] (part of her Earthsea series). Besides the theme of wizards, the only connection I can see is a certain narrative style that Le Guin's Earthsea and McKillip's early Riddle-Master trilogy share: a flat, concrete, sparse and emotionless tone. But that works against this book, not for it.
This is a puzzle book: a story-within-a-story, where all the stories are the same story in disguise. I really thought it might be going somewhere, and eventually it did come together, but the journey wasn't worth following and the destination wasn't worth reaching.
Starting with the body of a recently pregnant woman hauled up in the nets of a fishing ship (shown on the cover) and a mysterious story Teller relating a convoluted, very long and confusing tale of magic to the crew. The first two sentences from the Prologue do warn us:
"This is a story about monsters.
The real ones. Not the ones we tell children about."
For all the magic here, there is no wonder.
We follow a corrupt wizard named Nemot, who gets raised from the dead as a giant talking rook (crow) named Tomen (and yet no one can make the connection!) and sets about wreaking destruction until a cursed half-mad king, an orphaned boy, and a magically sentient frog try to stop him. The real message: for all the magic in the world, the real monsters are men. But this travesty of a coming-of-age-tale renders this message trite and simplistic, and it has no emotional resonance. Not a single character here is likeable, or worth rooting for. And the ending - a forced romantic set-up to make the now much older orphaned boy "into a man" - is eye-rollingly awful.
I'd recommend skipping this one.
There's very few books I can say that about unequivocally, but this is one of them. I am a firm believer that all stories have merit but this one didn't connect with me at all. I nearly put it down twice, and in the end I should have - I wanted my time back.
This book has been on my radar for years, due to the striking cover art by Bonnie Leon (for a long time, I thought it was by Thomas Canty as it is very much in his style) and the comparisons to one of my all-time favourite authors, [a:Patricia A. McKillip|25|Patricia A. McKillip|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1220752490p2/25.jpg].
The glowing Locus review quoted on the inside front cover specially compares this to three books: [a:Gene Wolfe|23069|Gene Wolfe|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556979018p2/23069.jpg]'s [b:Peace|60213|Peace|Gene Wolfe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1391052690l/60213._SY75_.jpg|58579] (which I haven't read, and so cannot comment on), McKillip's [b:The Book of Atrix Wolfe|77353|The Book of Atrix Wolfe|Patricia A. McKillip|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1170900098l/77353._SY75_.jpg|1105994] (one of my faves by her) and [a:Ursula K. Le Guin|874602|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1244291425p2/874602.jpg]'s [b:Tehanu|13661|Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924581l/13661._SY75_.jpg|2902890] (part of her Earthsea series). Besides the theme of wizards, the only connection I can see is a certain narrative style that Le Guin's Earthsea and McKillip's early Riddle-Master trilogy share: a flat, concrete, sparse and emotionless tone. But that works against this book, not for it.
This is a puzzle book: a story-within-a-story, where all the stories are the same story in disguise. I really thought it might be going somewhere, and eventually it did come together, but the journey wasn't worth following and the destination wasn't worth reaching.
Starting with the body of a recently pregnant woman hauled up in the nets of a fishing ship (shown on the cover) and a mysterious story Teller relating a convoluted, very long and confusing tale of magic to the crew. The first two sentences from the Prologue do warn us:
"This is a story about monsters.
The real ones. Not the ones we tell children about."
For all the magic here, there is no wonder.
We follow a corrupt wizard named Nemot, who gets raised from the dead as a giant talking rook (crow) named Tomen (and yet no one can make the connection!) and sets about wreaking destruction until a cursed half-mad king, an orphaned boy, and a magically sentient frog try to stop him. The real message: for all the magic in the world, the real monsters are men. But this travesty of a coming-of-age-tale renders this message trite and simplistic, and it has no emotional resonance. Not a single character here is likeable, or worth rooting for. And the ending - a forced romantic set-up to make the now much older orphaned boy "into a man" - is eye-rollingly awful.
I'd recommend skipping this one.