A review by fihli
The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams

3.0

3 stars
The Ninth Rain is a decent book. But while I agree with most of the positive reviews, it failed to draw me in. The characters, for example, were great and a lot of people seemed to love them. I liked them (well, most of them) as well. They were all fleshed out and realistic. Vintage was eccentric and impatient, Noon strong and distrustful, Tormalin hedonistic and loyal.

The problem was, though, that I felt disconnected to them. Yes, I liked where Jen Williams was going with them, I liked the idea of them as characters, but I didn't care for them. My disconnect probably could have been helped through a first person pov, but the third person pov suits the overall story telling more, so Idk.

Vintage was a female Indiana Jones and I liked her the most. She was the most interesting character to me and there should have been a heavier focus on her.

Noon was the second most interesting character and I enjoyed reading about her. Her relationship dynamic with Tormalin wasn't exactly new. It's reminiscent of The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue or Touch of Frost or a thousand other books but I didn't mind it never change a winning team, right? . I did think though, that what Tor did at the end of the story

Spoiler

locking Noon away and not listening to her/ not being there for her when Mother Fast brought back her worst memories and left her in emotional distress

disqualified him from any kind of further relationship with Noon. Alas, she disagreed seriously though, why did she forgive him so easily for that? It was such a dick move.

Bern and Aldasair were cute together, but other than that I didn't have a strong opinion about them. The way that Jen Williams included same sex relationships so naturally was pretty great and a real joy to read! And back to being negative again...

Hestillion's pov bored me. There wasn't one redeemable trait to her and what happened to her at the end was kind of predictable.
Speaking of...

The plot.
In one word: set-up.
Not much happened (especially, considering the length of this book. For a 300 page book this would be one thing, but Ninth Rain is almost 550 pages long). It was rather slow-paced which normally wouldn't be a problem, if I had been invested in the characters.
But I wasn't. So it was very slightly boring (not too much, otherwise I would have taken another star of).

Some other noteworthy points about the plot:
- Noon's final confrontation with Agent Lin was so anticlimactic, that I thought that Lin would reappear at the end of the story.
- The second plot twist was predictable and I called it the moment

Spoiler

Ygseril answered Hestillion

. I'm not sure whether it was intended to be as predictable, but it was. And I wouldn't have minded it as much, if the pay off hadn't been a cliff-hanger and the set up for the next book, but it was.
- Also,

Spoiler

the ending with the warbeasts was kind of ridiculous with everyone just being bonded to the overpowered war beasts. I don't know what amused me so much, but it didn't feel tonally consistent

- and

Spoiler

Vintage meeting Nanthema also felt pretty anticlimactic. Again, it felt like a set up for the later books and like both of them, as well as their relationship, would play a more important role some time in the future

.

The Ninth Rain's world was what really shone for me. Sarn was pretty great. There are vampiric elves Eborans and the worm people (who reminded me a lot of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, mixed with the monsters from Ender's game I've only watched the movie though, so I don't know how much they resemble the monsters of the book).

The snippets of Vintage's letters and diary were wonderfully written and especially interesting, as were her thoughts on the Winnowry. I wish there had been more of that, as the world felt refreshingly unique and this was a great way to obtain information without it being to info-dumpy.

Overall, this book was good but I would only recommend it to people who are ready to commit to the whole series. I'm (probably) not going to continue on unless my library gets the next book in the series, although I think that most of my issues, especially with the plot, will be solved with the next book.