The Immortals: Part 1

The book I am currently reading is extensive, so I will have to do it in two parts.

The book is called The Immortals. It is an epic, intriguing fantasy by Paul Stewart, Illustrated by Chris Riddel, and it is the tenth and last volume in a series called the Edge Chronicles. The Edge chronicles follows four people in three time periods, in a completely original and fantastical world. Chronologically, the series is made up of three trilogies plus one book: the Quint trilogy (The Curse of the Gloamgloazer, The Winter Knights, and Clash of the Sky Galleons), the Twig trilogy (Beyond the Deepwoods, Stormchaser, and Midnight Over Sanctaphrax), the Rook trilogy (Last of the Sky Pirates, Vox, and Freeglader), and finally, The Immortals. But, numbered chronologically and put into written order, they are: 4, 5, 6, 1, 7, 8, 9, 2, 3, 10. This is difficult to understand, but fortunately you can just look it all up on wikipedia.

But enough talking about the series; I have to review this one book. The plot so far is that a young adventurer, Nate Quarter, is simply making a living as a lamplighter, lighting lamps for the workers in the phraxmines (an incredible idea that I'm not going to explain right now). But of course, the precious phraxcrystals the workers are digging out are being hoarded by a corrupted, treacherous creature. Eventually, Nate must leave the place where he lives, with only his belongings, his friend Slip, and his abilities. He has to find a new job and place to stay. Doesn't seem like a 'epic fantastical fantasy' yet, does it? Well, so far, it kind of isn't. But what the inside cover tells me is that a giant war is coming, as well as a storm like no other. This plot echoes plots of past books in this series, actually, but never before has Stewart combined the 'war plot' and the 'storm plot'. Also, I have full faith in his ability to make something interesting and new happen. Another plot point which is just budding is that in the heavenly garden of Riverrise, an ancient one-eyed waif is living. Something, however, is not quite right. At this point, though, I have no idea what.

I applaud Stewart for including Riverrise again; it was only even mentioned before in one book. In Midnight Over Sanctaphrax, Twig and his friends have to make a long and perilous journey through expansive forests to get there. But in this book, the map has expanded overwhelmingly. To put this in perspective, the map is approximately fifty times larger than before. And Riverrise is completely on the opposite side of the map from where Twig and his friends set off. The whole scope of this enormous world just got gigantic. I can't really express my amazement at this, so if you want to understand better, get the books at the library or something.

But moving on to the non-plot values.
Where I am right now, I am already impressed, once again, with Stewart's rich, full writing. It keeps me reading even though I am not totally engrossed by the story yet. But his skilled use of descriptions, scene details, and character idiosyncrasy is just very well done. I am also very impressed with Riddel's illustrations, but that's not the most important thing. The problem is, at my point in the book, there is not much to say but that the writing, drawings, characters, plot, everything about the book is wonderful. To put it in perspective, it is my second favorite series, second only to Harry Potter.

One of the things that most impresses me is Stewart's ability to make up such a detailed, amazing world, and keep it as interesting as he does. There are so many types of animals and creatures and places, I couldn't name them if I tried. I very much like how through the different time periods, the technology progresses. For example, in this book, the world has learned how to harness the power of phraxcrystals and phraxdust to use for all sorts of things. For one thing, there are now pistols and guns powered by phrax-something, whereas in past books, there mostly have just been swords and knifes.

The one thing I don't like about this book is its lack of a table of contents. This, however, does not actually take down the value of the book in any way. So it is a small thing, not worth going into, that simply forces me to use a bookmark, which I do anyway.

I hope that like in the other books, Nate is somehow related to the main characters of the rest of the series, but I don't know yet, which is the result of writing a review while reading such a long book. And to wrap it up, since I am not done with the book, I wont give it a rating, but I will say thanks for reading, and await another review soon.

Halt's Peril

To start off this blog, I would like to say that this is my second blog, if you want to see my first, go here. (That one was made several years ago, keep in mind.) So I have a little blogging experience.

But moving on, this will, as the title implies, be a look at books. More specifically, a reviewing blog of the various books I read. So as my first review, I am going to review the wonderful fantasy, Halt’s Peril. Halt’s Peril is the ninth installment in the series called Ranger’s Apprentice, about a boy named will who is too small to become a knight, but Halt, a Ranger, agrees to take him in and trains him in the ways of the Arualen Ranger. By this book, however, Will is in his early twenties, and legally no longer a ‘ranger’s apprentice’.

This series is a series in which the author, John Flannagan, uses multiple books to tell the same substory, splitting the books somewhere in the story. This can be slightly annoying, but in its own way has a good effect. But this book itself is the second part in the story about Will, Halt, and their friend and knight, Horace, investigating and attempting to stop a religious deceiver named Tennyson, who uses the idea of a fake god to trick people into giving him money. But the main plot of this book is that a Hibernian assassin hits Halt with a poison bolt, and he is for a long time very near death.

The writing is well done in my opinion, and Flannagan is very skilled in using clever forms of sentences, as well as giving the characters wonderful lines, and distinctive idiolects for them. The plot progresses not too evenly, but it balances out. I especially like the plot twists and sudden unexpected changes. I see Flannagan’s writing improve over the course of this series, but something I don’t see change too much, is he uses more sophisticated words without totally knowing how to use them well. All in all, though, this book was very good.

One major thing this book was missing was romance. Not once did Will even think about his ‘love’, Alyss. And Halt’s wife, Lady Pauline, was rarely mentioned. This may be a side-effect of using two books for one story, but I’m sure Flannagan could have incorporated romance in some way if he tried. And as intriguing as this story was, I wish there had been more characters included. This was not really a problem in past books, mostly because many characters lived in the castle Redmont, Will’s home. But as in this book they are away chasing Tennyson, they lack any contact with people from home.

Despite this, Flannagan makes each character very distinct in personality, something many authors have a hard time doing. There are many characters in stories that are simply boring, but the latter is not true of this book. Another thing this book slightly lacks is the ability to make readers, or at least me, not be entirely engrossed in the book. This has been achieved by other books, but not this one. Even past Ranger’s Apprentice books have this, but, well you get the point.

And to continue the path of criticism, I was not impressed by the main plot of this book. It was basically: Halt, Will, and Horace are chasing after Tennyson, when a Hibernian assassin comes and barely skims Halt with a poison bolt, which results in the need to stop to take care of Halt. Will then retrieves Malcolm, a skilled doctor, and more worrying ensues, also decisions, emotions, all that. Well, you know some of that from earlier, but whatever. Not too creative, in my opinion, But Flannagan sort of makes up for it with the use of his characters and the suspense to make it more interesting. Now let’s talk about the ending.

For those of you who haven’t read the book, I am not going to spoil the ending for you, so the below text will be unreadable unless you highlight it.

It ended with Halt getting back to normal (of course), the Hibernian dying, and the good guys having a confrontation with Tennyson. (If you’re reading this, you have read the book, so you know the details.) I actually very much enjoyed that scene where the Hibernian tries to escape and ends up confronting Will, and then in an act of anger, Will simply throws a knife in to his back and kills him, ending the chapter by saying, “I don’t need you alive anymore.” Great effect. It gives the reader a sense of contentment and relief, as well as a sort of apprehension because it seems like a slightly viscous deed. And it did mostly end the substory, but it left a small gap of seemingly unfinished plot, probably because of the lack of Alyss. At least we know there will be a tenth book.

Back to complimentary points. In this book, as I was reading, I got a very vivid picture of what was going on. This may be because I am an experienced reader, but I experienced this vivid visual more than in some other books. Also, Halt’s Peril was a fairly smooth read. What I mean by that is there was never really a time when I had to go back and reread to understand something. Or when i had to explain something to myself to make it make sense.And the pages just simply flowed well. I don’t know how else to describe it.

But I’ll wrap this up now by saying that I give this book:

7/10 stars.