A review by jeanmercini
The Rogue by Trudi Canavan

3.0

I should start saying this book has been resting on my shelf for some years now. Back in 2011, I was in a Trudi Canavan craze after I’d read the Age of the Five and loved it. So, I went through all of her books which were available at the time, those being the The Black Magician Trilogy and The Magician’s Apprentice. They were nice books and, most importantly, they kept me interested (though I still find the Age of the Five her best work so far). So, anyway, by then, The Ambassador’s Mission was out and I decided to read it; let’s just say it was a major disappointment. I’d bought The Rogue as well, but after reading the first book in the new trilogy, many other books skipped in the line and I eventually forgot it; until recently, when I decided to read all the books I own.
I think Canavan made a mistake in starting this new trilogy or, at least, the way she did it, but I’ll focus on this book.
Ok, to the book itself:

First, the characters. Lorkin is not as interesting as Sonea was, and his plotline isn’t much better. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but whenever I got to his POV I was like: not again (*sighs*). I think he is boring, plain as that. Sonea was ok; her charisma from all the previous books granting her that. Danny got such an uninteresting part in this book I don’t even know why he was there. Then, there was the new POV character we have in this book: Lilia. Hm, well, her plot was a nice one to read and through most of the first part of the book, it was the most interesting one for me, to be honest. But I still thought the resolution to her story to be very predictable. Oh, and I hope I’m never as stupid or blind as she was, at least in the beginning.

Second, the pace. Seriously, this book felt like one big, almost-500-pages-long filler all along. What do I care about Dannyl getting all anxious over Tayend throughout pages and pages?

And what of the lingering sexual tension between him and Achati, which never results in anything, by the way?

. And his research – well, if you’ve read The Magician’s Apprentice, most of that isn’t news, so, boring… What I’m complaining about is: little actually happens to the main characters in this book. I like Canavan’s writing style. The way she puts in all of the POVs in a single chapter is a good device most often, I think, because even if you don’t like a character or its story, they’re short chapterlets and you get them mingled with the ones you actually care about and is quickly done with them. But then, there is a problem she created for herself: all the characters have to be in the same timeline. So, she has to slow down some plotlines to keep the coherence in other plotlines, which made this book really slow and, often, boring (I’ve used this word a lot in this review…). But even then, I think she could’ve sped up all the plotlines, anyway.

So, overall, the book is ok, but not much more than that. I do hope the next book to be more interesting, though. (I gave it 2.5 stars).