The Blacktongue Thief

                  One of the ways I judge the quality of a book I’m reading is to ask how much I thought about it when I wasn’t reading it. With books like Mistborn or Dune, I would think about them constantly and wonder when I could steal a few more pages’ worth of reading. With A Wizard of Earthsea, it was out of sight, out of mind. That measuring system is failing me for The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman. When I wasn’t actively reading it, the characters and the story almost never crossed my mind. But, when I read it, I enjoyed myself. How do you review a book like that?

 

                  The main character of this fantasy novel is Kinch, and he is a less than successful graduate of the local thieving academy, essentially behind on his student loans! He meets a mysterious warrior woman, who in turn introduces him to a powerful witch and her lovely apprentice, and hijinks ensue. It’s well written, for sure, and Buehlman gives Kinch an engaging and believable voice. It’s the sometimes jarring tone shifts that made me downgrade my overall review. Most of the book has a tone similar to the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie or the Chris Pine Dungeons and Dragons outing. In other words, light and adventurous. It’s that way until it’s not. Occasionally, for two pages or so, it turns ultra-dark and violent. The worst example is a bad character who survives a pretty harrowing situation, joins up with the heroes, and is then brutally killed in a way that doesn’t really service the plot. It’s jarring, to say the least.

 

                  Overall, I enjoyed it and found the ending satisfying enough to consider revisiting the characters in a potential sequel. There is another book in the series, but it’s a prequel, and I don’t think I need that. I’ll settle in at 4 outta 5 stars.

A Wizard of Earthsea

Hey everybody! Join me while I disparage an icon of 20th-century fiction literature and one of their seminal works! A Wizard of Earthsea is one of those books I missed along the way. I had a copy of it as a teen, but I guess I set it aside to read yet another Star Trek novelization. In my defense, my copy of Wizard back then had a very dour grey cover and tiny print. I know, excuses, excuses. Since I’ve sort of made this my year of fantasy, I thought I should go back and hit some of the classical titles, and this one was high on my list. 

Ged is an aspiring wizard from the archipelago of Earthsea. After demonstrating some power as a kid, he is sent to a master to study, who then sends him to the most renowned wizard school. He gets into an argument with a haughty classmate, tries to prove himself by casting a dangerous spell, and instead unleashes a dangerous dark shadow creature into the world. He runs from it for a while, then he turns and starts chasing it. By the way, during the bulk of the action in the book, he’s about 19, although sometimes he acts 91.

It's a short one, but did I ever struggle to get through it! It reads like an outline or, better yet, a Wikipedia entry instead of a fully formed novel. Ged goes here and does this. Then, he goes to a different place to do a different thing. Then, yet another place where he does something else. Rinse and repeat for the entire book. He wanders, sometimes with a motive but sometimes without. There is barely any dialogue, so each “adventure” plays like a quick tiny vignette. And the conclusion? It is far and away, without a close second, the most anticlimactic ending to any piece of media I have ever consumed that wasn’t written by a fifth grader.

This feels like it could become a movie that is legitimately better than the book. Lots of the adventures he goes on are interesting, but the book asks you to do a lot of the work imagining them. The right writer and director could really turn this into something fun to watch. 95% of the characters we meet, including Ged, are people of color, which is a welcome change to the tropes of the genre. Somebody get on this instead of a Harry Potter series!

I know Le Guin is hailed as a genre giant for a reason, and I’m going to make a point to read some of her sci-fi. This one was a huge miss for me, though. 2 outta 5 stars

The Fifth Season 

About a third of the way into The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, I thought, “This is so well written, but it’s just too bleak.” I’ve been making a point to read fantasy this year to try to escape the stumbling collapse of America, and this novel was just as depressing as the 6 o’clock news. 

 

            By the three-quarters mark, I was convinced it was one of the best written books I’ve read in any genre, and I’m committed to finishing the trilogy. But, yeah, it was still super bleak. The novel is set in a pre-industrial society on a super continent under constant threat from seismic instability. The biggest of these shocks can set off the titular Fifth Seasons, which are super winters that can last from years to decades. The people of the continent are divided into two groups. Most are Stills, or regular people, who comprise most of the population. The rest are Orogenes, mutants of a sort who can control the movement of the earth by pulling heat or energy from any nearby source. An untrained Orogene can be dangerous, so they are a tightly controlled class. They are either killed as children as soon as the power manifests, or they are taken from their families and sent to be trained at The Fulcrum. Here, they are taught how to use their powers to soothe seismic threats and protect the Stills. 

 

            We follow three characters through the story. One is a young girl, freshly taken from her family and sent to train at The Fulcrum. The second is a gifted graduate of the institute who is on a mission with the world’s strongest Orogene while being expected to produce a child with him. The last character is a woman fleeing an apocalyptic event on the continent who is searching for her husband, who has killed one of her Orogene children and fled with the other. The stories wind together to paint a picture of life and death in a world where society is cyclically torn down and forced to rebuild again.

 

            The prose and construction of the story are amazing. Even in the darkest moments, it’s a beautiful read. Clues are dropped in so subtly, but not purposefully hidden, that your jaw drops when the twists come. Is it a fantasy novel? Is it a sci-fi story? Could it be both? I guess the only way to know is to keep reading the series! Most of the characters are people of color, and there’s also plenty of queer representation, both of which felt unique and welcome in a fantasy world.

 

            The feel-good read of the year it is not, but it is a journey I think you’ll be happy you started. I’d even recommend it to people with little or no interest in genre books. I think it’s a novel that busts beyond its shelving in the bookshop. I’ll be back later this year for sure to see what happens next to this extraordinary cast of characters.