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beejai 's review for:
The Hidden City
by Michelle West
I want to give this four stars... but I can't. I won't post spoilers here, but I am really, really not happy with the way one of the major plot points went down. This book is the start of a HUGE series. We have The House War books 1-3, then The Sun Sword 1-6, then The House War 4-8. I also understand that The Sun Sword books were written first so this is in a way a prequel. So what is written here is background material for what comes later. So I understand it. But I still really, really don't like it.
OK. Enough of that. The Hidden City. Hmmmmm. Think of this book as a John Wayne fantasy. You have a John Wayne (or Clint Eastwood if you prefer) type of character who very early on gets robbed by Shirley Temple. For some strange reason (which we will learn later, but no spoilers here), he decides to sort of adopt her. She then goes on to gather about her a tribe of... little rascals. So you have John Wayne as the father figure to Shirley Temple and the little rascals in a land of swords and magic. But throughout, the book never loses the feel of being a John Wayne novel. Seriously. It is pulled off quite well.
Michelle West has done an excellent job of world and character building in this book. Michelle West has a diverse set of preteen orphans and she has given them distinct personalities far better than Orson Scott Card did with Ender's Jeesh. There is a lot of dialogue and some beautiful descriptive narrative here but it is light on action. At some points the heavy dialogue/light action combo becomes distracting. There is a deeply emotional chapter-long conversation that takes place all while a knife is being held to the throat of a villain, and yet he does not once interrupt or contribute to the conversation.
As I said, the ending is horrible. I really did not like it. But I absolutely loved the journey to getting there. I am certainly going to read on and am hoping this is a good long series that will keep me busy for a good long while. But I might not get past book 2 if I find something similar happening again. So the jury is still out.
OK. Enough of that. The Hidden City. Hmmmmm. Think of this book as a John Wayne fantasy. You have a John Wayne (or Clint Eastwood if you prefer) type of character who very early on gets robbed by Shirley Temple. For some strange reason (which we will learn later, but no spoilers here), he decides to sort of adopt her. She then goes on to gather about her a tribe of... little rascals. So you have John Wayne as the father figure to Shirley Temple and the little rascals in a land of swords and magic. But throughout, the book never loses the feel of being a John Wayne novel. Seriously. It is pulled off quite well.
Michelle West has done an excellent job of world and character building in this book. Michelle West has a diverse set of preteen orphans and she has given them distinct personalities far better than Orson Scott Card did with Ender's Jeesh. There is a lot of dialogue and some beautiful descriptive narrative here but it is light on action. At some points the heavy dialogue/light action combo becomes distracting. There is a deeply emotional chapter-long conversation that takes place all while a knife is being held to the throat of a villain, and yet he does not once interrupt or contribute to the conversation.
As I said, the ending is horrible. I really did not like it. But I absolutely loved the journey to getting there. I am certainly going to read on and am hoping this is a good long series that will keep me busy for a good long while. But I might not get past book 2 if I find something similar happening again. So the jury is still out.