Soul of Fire

So after reading Laura Anne Gilman's Heart of Briar, I couldn't wait for the sequel, Soul of Fire.  I preordered it on my Kindle, and was super excited to get the book a week earlier than expected from Amazon.  I dove right into the story, eager to see what happened to Jan and company.

I have to say, I was rather disappointed in Gilman's Soul of Fire. Having finished it, it reminded me of the way I felt after reading Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife: at the end of The Golden Compass, Pullman could take the story literally anywhere.  Unfortunately the place he chose to go with it was so boring I was extremely disappointed.  While Gilman wasn't in the same boat as that (Heart of Briar wasn't nearly as open-ended as The Golden Compass), I still feel very unsatisfied with how the story played out.

I'm going to give a spoiler alert here.  I want to talk about this book in more detail.

A good part of the problem, in my opinion, with Soul of Fire was similar to my issue in Matt Forbeck's Brave New World: Revelation.  There were a lot of characters introduced, many of whom were minor characters, making it hard to keep track of who was who, especially when supernatural creature names were thrown into the mix, often without a real explanation of what they looked like.  To make this even worse, many of these minor characters were killed off (like the cops who went missing), reminding me an awful lot of Darth Maul, Shadow Hunter by Michael Reaves (which is not a book you want to be reminding me of).
With a whole mass of characters, it is hard to give the ones I actually cared about (mainly Jan and Martin) enough screen time.  On top of that, it took a while for Jan to actually start doing something (reminding me of Katniss' daze in Mockingjay, even though she wasn't actually dazed).  And then when she, Martin and Tyler go off against AJ's express orders, they end up hanging out with the missing Preternatural Queen for awhile while almost everyone else seemed to be doing more.  Now don't get me wrong, the Queen was interesting, but overall this part of the book seemed to slog on.

The book ended with a couple of big fights (which Jan was mostly not a part of because she doesn't really fight), then with the Queen agreeing to go back to her Court.  The book kept insisting that there needed to be a balance between the Preternaturals and the Earthlings, so the Queen pretty much just left with little fuss in order to restore the natural order of things.  After that, a shell-shocked Jan is left trying to move on with her life as best she can.  All in all, this wasn't a very satisfying ending.  Especially since Jan didn't end up with either Tyler or Martin.  Yes, I was biased; this novel was published by the Harlequin Luna Books imprint, so I was expecting something a bit more than "well, Tyler left.  The end."  (And yes, I realize ending up with a kelpie might not be great news for Jan, but Martin did seem to be a love interest of sorts.  And one who was interesting and really seemed to like her.  I won't lie, I was hoping they'd end up together).

So yes, I found Soul of Fire rather disappointing.  Which is too bad, because I like the world, many of the characters, and the creatures who inhabit Gilman's Portals duology.   

Interworld

I started reading Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves' Interworld right before my trip to Toronto. I was hoping to have it finished before I went, but I was a bit too busy and ended up having to finish it on the plane.

Overall I thought it was okay. There was something missing from it, and I can't quite put my finger on what that was. The characters were awesome. The idea was great. And the plot seemed okay. But it just didn't have the usual spark that I associate with a Gaiman book.

The premise of the book is that a boy, Joey Harker, has the ability to travel between worlds. This is a power shared by all of his counterparts in the other worlds. And it is for this reason that all of his incarnations are hunted by two opposing factions who wish to harness this power to fuel their own dimension hopping ships. While many of the Harkers have succumbed, there are some who have escaped, banding together in an effort to stop either side from winning.

So yes, most of the characters in the book are Joey Harkers from other worlds. Only they are in most cases extremely unique individuals. There is Jo, the girl who has wings that are too small to fly with unless she is on a magic world, Jerzy, the boy who looks similar to Joey except that he has feathers rather than hair. Jakon, the wolf girl. The list goes on and on. Both male and female.

One of my major complaints was that we are only shown the magic side of the spectrum, personified by HEX. HEX is a group of wizards who have found a way to boil the Harkers down to their very essence, then sealing that essence into jars which are used to power their ships. They use magic spells and whatnot, and come from worlds with fairy creatures. On the other side of the spectrum is the Binary, who come from scientific worlds. They freeze the Harkers and scientifically extract their essence to power their spaceships. But other than one brief encounter, the book focuses exclusively on HEX.

My other complaint has to do with Michael Reaves. He wrote another book that I read (before I started this blog) called Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, which was an extremely bad book. (Basically, it made Maul look really bad. It started by saying how awesome he is, and then he spent the majority of the book failing to capture and kill a jedi padawan, a droid and some guy. The end was awesome, but it just couldn't make up for the rest of the book). So I was rather hesitant to pick up another book by him, but I made an exception because this is a Neil Gaiman. I am thinking that it is due to this bias that the book failed to shine in my eyes. It was fun, but it wasn't spectacular.