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A review by cupiscent
Starless by Jacqueline Carey
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
I am so perplexed about this one.
There's so much in the first two thirds that I really enjoyed. The settings are somewhat generic - a religious order / school for warriors (/rogues), and then a somewhat Middle-Eastern royal court - but they come alive in Carey's rich and sensitive detail, and through the exploration centred very firmly in our first-person narrator. Slowly, a wider and more unusual world opens up, one with a unique deity and magic arrangement, which lives richly in our characters.
And then in the final third, weget on a boat, meet a dozen new characters, and hop from new setting to new setting, solving simple problems with obviously provided answers, chasing the prophecy quest.
Wait, what? It kinda gave me whiplash, the speed at which I went from trundling happily along through the prose, to dragging my heels and skimming over passages. It reads like nothing so much as a roleplaying campaign, preceded by the really long and intricate backstory that the player thought up for their character. We lost Khai completely in the barrage of other characters, and everything became simply told in the happening. There was absolutely no tension about events, because of course, having come this far with Khai, she wasn't going to fail. And there was no tension about what it would cost her, because we barely met all the rest of this bunch five minutes ago. (Honestly, given the glimpses of the stories of the other prophecy-seeker characters, I feel like this book may have arisen from "Can I tell a compelling story about the least interesting one of the bunch?" Don't get me wrong, Khai's story was delightful, but the other characters all had even more fascinating meat on their bones.)
And thus my perplexity. The parts of this book just don't feel like they go together, in a very "if you wanted to go there, why did you start from here?" sort of way. I wasn't just less compelled by the final third, I actively hated it. If I hadn't already invested 400 pages of reading, I would have set the book aside. But how many readers who'd love that final quest-chase third never get there because they can't drag themselves through the first two thirds? So many decisions that went into this book are baffling to me.
Anyway, four stars for the first chunk, two stars for the last chunk, endless hand-waving all up.
There's so much in the first two thirds that I really enjoyed. The settings are somewhat generic - a religious order / school for warriors (/rogues), and then a somewhat Middle-Eastern royal court - but they come alive in Carey's rich and sensitive detail, and through the exploration centred very firmly in our first-person narrator. Slowly, a wider and more unusual world opens up, one with a unique deity and magic arrangement, which lives richly in our characters.
And then in the final third, we
Wait, what? It kinda gave me whiplash, the speed at which I went from trundling happily along through the prose, to dragging my heels and skimming over passages. It reads like nothing so much as a roleplaying campaign, preceded by the really long and intricate backstory that the player thought up for their character. We lost Khai completely in the barrage of other characters, and everything became simply told in the happening. There was absolutely no tension about events, because of course, having come this far with Khai, she wasn't going to fail. And there was no tension about what it would cost her, because we barely met all the rest of this bunch five minutes ago. (Honestly, given the glimpses of the stories of the other prophecy-seeker characters, I feel like this book may have arisen from "Can I tell a compelling story about the least interesting one of the bunch?" Don't get me wrong, Khai's story was delightful, but the other characters all had even more fascinating meat on their bones.)
And thus my perplexity. The parts of this book just don't feel like they go together, in a very "if you wanted to go there, why did you start from here?" sort of way. I wasn't just less compelled by the final third, I actively hated it. If I hadn't already invested 400 pages of reading, I would have set the book aside. But how many readers who'd love that final quest-chase third never get there because they can't drag themselves through the first two thirds? So many decisions that went into this book are baffling to me.
Anyway, four stars for the first chunk, two stars for the last chunk, endless hand-waving all up.