Book review
Jan. 21st, 2013 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brushwolfOn Stranger Tides is a rich tale of swashbucklers and voudounistas set at the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. The first half of the book was like Rafael Sabatini collaborating with C.S. Forester, only better, and I thought it was a fantastic book. And then it just goes flat. It's not a bad book, it's just no longer this amazing kickass thing.
The first half rattles ahead at top speeds. We're introduced to the hero and the heroine's villainous physician, her father driven by the loss of his wife as these villains sell their ship out to pirates acting as agents of dread Blackbeard. Our hero learns the pirate trade and we learn more about his childhood, his reasons for coming to the Carribean, then helps his rakish captor/mentor/captain escape the clutches of the Royal Navy when they are betrayed - for the villains are sailing north to Florida to rendezvous with Blackbeard, the most powerful white bocor ever trained in an escaped slave community. For voudoun magic is very real here, though iron interferes with its potency. And the prize that father, physician and Blackbeard are all after is nothing more than the Fountain of Youth itself, a thing which takes them past Lovecraftian groves of hideous fungus and into a space beyond normal geometry, deep into the realm of the dead.
And that's the first half of the book.
Then it sort of rambles. It turns out that the father's trying to bring back his wife by putting her soul into the heroine's body, the physician kidnaps her and the others barely escape because there's some Victorianish Fate Worse than Death where he wishes her complete devotion, and everyone sets out in pursuit because Blackbeard wants her to be his bride. He practices voudoun in part thanks to his brides, but that burns out their magical power and sanity and life quickly, and the ultimate prize here would be someone who'd shed blood in the land of the dead... and now, thanks to the uncompleted ritual, that's exactly what the heroine is. There's a sea battle in which the physician's killed - there's some kinda offensive writing about his abuse survivor background - there's a plot twist where the uncle our hero was pursuing turns out to be alive, well, and also a minion of Blackbeard, who's basically set up his own death to return as an anonymous pirate. The father's plans are foiled, and he's killed shortly before the hero - who's becoming so fatigued and hurt that his fights go from desperate to completely unrealistic - returns to foil Blackbeard's plans. This culminates in marrying the heroine mid-swordfight so that their combined magical strength can defeat Blackbeard forever.
... uh, what? The second half of the book just wasn't all that special. It might be that by the time I'm half through thick books like this one my interest is less, but I still think it's a writing thing.
The first half rattles ahead at top speeds. We're introduced to the hero and the heroine's villainous physician, her father driven by the loss of his wife as these villains sell their ship out to pirates acting as agents of dread Blackbeard. Our hero learns the pirate trade and we learn more about his childhood, his reasons for coming to the Carribean, then helps his rakish captor/mentor/captain escape the clutches of the Royal Navy when they are betrayed - for the villains are sailing north to Florida to rendezvous with Blackbeard, the most powerful white bocor ever trained in an escaped slave community. For voudoun magic is very real here, though iron interferes with its potency. And the prize that father, physician and Blackbeard are all after is nothing more than the Fountain of Youth itself, a thing which takes them past Lovecraftian groves of hideous fungus and into a space beyond normal geometry, deep into the realm of the dead.
And that's the first half of the book.
Then it sort of rambles. It turns out that the father's trying to bring back his wife by putting her soul into the heroine's body, the physician kidnaps her and the others barely escape because there's some Victorianish Fate Worse than Death where he wishes her complete devotion, and everyone sets out in pursuit because Blackbeard wants her to be his bride. He practices voudoun in part thanks to his brides, but that burns out their magical power and sanity and life quickly, and the ultimate prize here would be someone who'd shed blood in the land of the dead... and now, thanks to the uncompleted ritual, that's exactly what the heroine is. There's a sea battle in which the physician's killed - there's some kinda offensive writing about his abuse survivor background - there's a plot twist where the uncle our hero was pursuing turns out to be alive, well, and also a minion of Blackbeard, who's basically set up his own death to return as an anonymous pirate. The father's plans are foiled, and he's killed shortly before the hero - who's becoming so fatigued and hurt that his fights go from desperate to completely unrealistic - returns to foil Blackbeard's plans. This culminates in marrying the heroine mid-swordfight so that their combined magical strength can defeat Blackbeard forever.
... uh, what? The second half of the book just wasn't all that special. It might be that by the time I'm half through thick books like this one my interest is less, but I still think it's a writing thing.