Scan barcode
A review by ergative
The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding
5.0
Fuck, I just love these books so much. I don't think this one was as *good* as previous 5-star books, but it gave me so much pleasure I can't rate it lower.
I love in particular in this one how the entire plot springs from Frey being an utter dumbass--not just an unlucky bastard who stumbled into something bigger than he realized, as in previous books, but genuinely doing something completely stupid in a way that is entirely within character for him. And yet--because of the work done in the previous two books--it is equally believable that his crew would go with him to try to fix his mistake, partly out of loyalty to him, but also--because they are who they are--out of a certain selfish understanding that they have a good thing going for them on the Ketty Jay, and it will all fall apart if Frey can't fix his problem. This isn't found family here; this is an effective crew who work despite all their flaws, and yet still retain their own bits of privacy and their own secrets. Silo's personal struggles with leadership and the way he compares his own approach to repeated failures with Frey's approach works extremely well. Crake's developing relationship with the Century Knight mirrors Frey's (slightly boring) maturing understanding of how he wants to relate to Trinica, right down to how they each do something unforgiveable in service of the main quest.
Speaking of the main quest, this book was brilliantly constructed of set pieces, each of which had its own goal, and all of which contributed directly to plot: the opening gambit (with Frey getting completely spanked by Ashua for most of that chase--attagirl, Ashua); the train heist; the Firecrow race (wonderful little bit of mercy for Harkins there); the escape from the warrens (btw, the gols were DEFINITELY inspired by gollum); the prison break, and the eventual climax in the Axryx city (btw, the eventual demon-wranglling set-up was DEFINITELY inspired by ghostbusters)--all of it was so nicely integrated with the plot and the various characters arcs. Even Pinn's brief attempt at being an inventor gets a chance to play into things. Silo's arc especially I found the most moving. He's been rather neglected in the previous two books when it comes to backstory, but he got a very good one here.
Anyway, great fun. Great ride. I immediately started the next one.
I love in particular in this one how the entire plot springs from Frey being an utter dumbass--not just an unlucky bastard who stumbled into something bigger than he realized, as in previous books, but genuinely doing something completely stupid in a way that is entirely within character for him. And yet--because of the work done in the previous two books--it is equally believable that his crew would go with him to try to fix his mistake, partly out of loyalty to him, but also--because they are who they are--out of a certain selfish understanding that they have a good thing going for them on the Ketty Jay, and it will all fall apart if Frey can't fix his problem. This isn't found family here; this is an effective crew who work despite all their flaws, and yet still retain their own bits of privacy and their own secrets. Silo's personal struggles with leadership and the way he compares his own approach to repeated failures with Frey's approach works extremely well. Crake's developing relationship with the Century Knight mirrors Frey's (slightly boring) maturing understanding of how he wants to relate to Trinica, right down to how they each do something unforgiveable in service of the main quest.
Speaking of the main quest, this book was brilliantly constructed of set pieces, each of which had its own goal, and all of which contributed directly to plot: the opening gambit (with Frey getting completely spanked by Ashua for most of that chase--attagirl, Ashua); the train heist; the Firecrow race (wonderful little bit of mercy for Harkins there); the escape from the warrens (btw, the gols were DEFINITELY inspired by gollum); the prison break, and the eventual climax in the Axryx city (btw, the eventual demon-wranglling set-up was DEFINITELY inspired by ghostbusters)--all of it was so nicely integrated with the plot and the various characters arcs. Even Pinn's brief attempt at being an inventor gets a chance to play into things. Silo's arc especially I found the most moving. He's been rather neglected in the previous two books when it comes to backstory, but he got a very good one here.
Anyway, great fun. Great ride. I immediately started the next one.