Hmm, where to start other than saying this is a Brandon Sanderson novel, and at this point he’s pretty much going to get money from me for every book that he writes, so of course I read this one.  On we go.

Book Stats

370 pages

Fantasy, Steampunk

First book in the series

Characters

The main character in the book is Joel, a young man attending the one of the premier schools in the country, Armedius Academy.  He isn’t especially intelligent enough to attend the school, nor is his family rich in any way, but his father had worked there for years before he died and as a way of thanking his family the principal offers him free tuition.  Joel is an interesting character, one who enjoys learning a lot, just not the things that those above him think that he should be learning (similar to myself in high school in some respects).  Joel is a bit of an outcast, liked by most of the people that he meets but never really fitting into any of the cliques that form in society.  Throughout the course of the book he also meets Melody, a cheerful young girl who is a rithmatist but doesn’t really care to be.  The juxtaposition of the two – the cheerful girl who doesn’t care for being a rithmatist and the slightly dour boy who wishes beyond everything else that he could be – is played off well in the story.  All of the side characters in the book were solid as well.

Setting

The book is set in an early 1900’s version of America where instead of being the full continent, it consists of about 60 large islands.  There is also a very large steampunk aspect to the world, with varied and powerful machines set up and used throughout the story.  It’s an interesting way to set the story within our world without it being our world.  By doing this he gains the advantages of having a story set in our world, you know the general geography and where everything is in relation to other areas, along with a rough history of the world, but he also gets the benefits of having a fantasy world, where the magic and political order doesn’t feel out of place.  It’s really a well done setting.

Plot

The book starts towards the end of a school year as Joel starts to figure out what he wants to do with his schedule.  Through a bit of trickery on his part, he manages to find a way to work with a professor who is a historian of Rithmatics, the magic of the world.  As he starts working with Professor Fitch he finds out that Fitch was chosen to investigate the disappearance of a young girl who was training as a rithmatist.  The book plays out as a murder mystery, but by the end it starts to turn into the epic fantasy style of series that Sanderson is known for.

Enjoyment

The characters were all fun, and the story was fast paced and interesting (I actually read the book in one sitting, yeah, all 370 pages.  To be fair, it’s a YA book, but a fairly long YA book.).  I actually think that one of the biggest weaknesses for most of the book – and this is rare for me to say about a Sanderson book – is the magic system.  It’s a very visually intensive magic system, and until you see it in use later in the book, it’s a bit hard to visualize exactly what is going on.  There are illustrations throughout the book that help with this, but it’s still a bit strange (more on the illustrations later).  As always Sanderson had a neat twist on the end of the novel, it’s really this twist which allows for the expansion of the single book into a bigger world and story.  The book could have been good without it, but I’m always a fan of big series with lots of books, so that works out for me.  It’s also good because it took me most of the book to fully understand the magic system, so I’d like to see more books with the same magic system now that I have a really good idea of how it works.

Now, one of the things that helps the magic system, and in many ways the book as a whole is that there are illustrations before every chapter that depict the circles used in the book, as well as illustrations throughout the pages that depict the ‘chalklings’ as they’re drawn.  In the acknowledgements of the book, Sanderson mentions that Ben McSweeney – the artist for the pictures within the book – threw out the idea of doing a graphic novel of the story, and in some ways I think that it might work better than the prose version did.

Overall Grade

I enjoyed the book, and I look forward to reading the rest of the series once it comes out.

8/10

Footnote here, the first picture is the actual cover of the book that I have, but I think I like the second picture better, I’m think it might be the UK cover for the book, but I’m not sure.  Either way, it’s a cool picture for the book.

Iron Angel is the sequel to Scar Night by Alan Campbell.  While the book is the direct sequel, to me it didn’t really feel like the first book did a whole lot to foreshadow this book even existing at all.  This series does a couple of really interesting things, but isn’t the best I’ve ever seen.

Book Stats

493 pages

Fantasy/Steampunk

Second book in the Deepgate Codex, sequel to Scar Night

Characters

The two primary returning characters from the first book are Dill and Rachel.  We are also introduced to Hasp (another god, brother to Ulcis from the first book) who teaches Dill how to fight in this book, which helps Dill to not be the whiny little brat he was in the first book.  One of the coolest new characters is John Anchor, who is a servant of Cospinol, the god of Brine and Fog.  Anchor is literally an anchor, he tows Cospinol’s ship around through a harness he wears with a rope extending into the air leading to Cospinol’s flying ship.  Another character who has a large viewpoint is Alice Harper, who is dead and serves King Minoa as an engineer in Hell.  Overall the characters just didn’t impress me much in this book, they seem to be just along for the ride as the plot moves forward.

Setting

The setting is the best part of this book, which is both good and bad.  It’s good because it’s so far away from your traditional fantasy story that it seems fresh, it’s bad because the characters and plot aren’t done well enough to support the intricate setting.  Along with the idea of John Anchor towing the boat of Cospinol, the god of Brine and Fog, there are other gods mentioned as well.  Not in this book but mentioned in the world is the god of chains, and in this book there is also mention of the god of knives and flowers.  This is close enough to what you’re used to to be recognizable, but different enough to make it really cool.  Also introduced in this book are shiftblades, weapons that can change form quickly which make for a couple of interesting combat scenes.  There is also mention of an interesting society of swordsmen who study either the schools of Kiril or Yen and depending on the school they have a sword ranging from pure white to pure black, with the closer they are to the pure color indicating a higher rank of swordsmanship (while this is a great idea, it is very briefly and poorly used in the book).  The representation of Hell in this book is also fascinating, with each person’s soul creating their own private room in Hell.

Plot

The weakest point of the book to me, which again is sad because with a better story in this world it could be a fantastic piece of fiction.  Rachel and Dill begin by trying to get away from Deepgate, and then are captured and brought back into the city and thus forced back into the plot.  The book does explore the results of Dill being brought back from the dead.  Unfortunately, Carnival, who was a really interesting character in the first book, is practically non-existant in this book.  Her part is so quickly throne away that is seemed like the author just didn’t want anything to do with her character in this book.  The Soft Men from the first book actually appear in this book, but have nothing to do with the plot, which irritated me almost as much as the quickly glossed over swordsmen mentioned above.  The overall story has to do with the ruler of Hell trying to overthrow Earth since Heaven has been closed off.  Much much like the first book it just felt forced to me.  The principal viewpoint characters never seem to make their own decisions, they just go where the plot needs them to.

Enjoyment

The setting shows so much potential, and the characters might not be as bad if they weren’t just going where the plot needed them to go.  Not the best book I’ve ever read, but I will at least finish the trilogy.

Overall Grade

The potential and the ideas of the book are better than the overall execution, but if you’re looking for a fantasy book with a unique setting you can do worse than this book, but you can also do better with some other books.

5/10

Scar Night, by Alan Campbell.  I heard about this book during my last day in my Fiction Appreciation class this past semester.  Instead of a final exam in that class, we had to talk about a book that we liked that we thought the rest of the class would enjoy as well.  I talked about two different series, the Mistborn trilogy by Sanderson and the Serial Killer trilogy by Dan Wells.  Anyway, I heard about this series there, and it sounded interesting enough to go buy it, so I did.  Anyway, on with the review.

Books Stats

549 pages

Fantasy/Steampunk

1st book of the Deepgate Codex

Characters

The book centers on several different characters, the main characters are Dill, Rachel, Carnival, Devon, and Mr. Nettles (no other name is ever given to him, which was odd at times).  One of the brilliant things done in this book is that Dill and Carnival are angels, but they aren’t what we typically think of as angels.  Dill is heavily protected by the church in the book (which worships Ulcis, the god of chains) and is very immature and unsure of himself, and Carnival is a 3,000 year old angel who terrorizes much of the population of Deepgate.  Since we all have a stereotype for the word angel from our society’s background this works as they angels in this book are far different from what we expect.  Rachel is part of the Spine, an organization of assassin’s, and is sent to tutor Dill early in the book.  Devon works for the church and the city as a scientist who specializes in poisons which were used to help defend the city.  Lastly, Mr Nettles is a scavenger in the city who is trying to kill Carnival who he blames for killing his daughter.  The characters in the book were interesting and played off of each other as foils fairly well, this book focuses more on introducing all of the characters rather than developing them and sending them through extensive growth arcs, but they do go through small arcs in the story.

Setting

One of the interesting parts of this book is the setting.  Other than the fact that the angels exist, there really isn’t too much magic used in the book, it’s based more on technology which is what leads it more towards the steampunk genre as well as being part of the fantasy genre.  The city as a whole is also interesting as it hangs on huge chains over a vast abyss.  This is due to the religion of the book where the people worship Ulcis, the god of chains.

Plot

The plot begins in several different places at once.  Dill starts out being introduced to some of his duties within the church.  We explore some of the history of angels in the world through Dill’s story as well as being introduced to many of the other characters.  We are also introduced early on to Rachel, who is trying to help other members of the spine to kill Carnival, which also leads into the storyline with Mr. Nettles seeking revenge for his daughter’s death.  The plot was probably the weakest part of the book to me.  It starts out with several disparate plotlines that combine into one main plot about 1/2 through the book.  After they combine however, it splits back into 2 separate plotlines that really don’t work well together.

Enjoyment

The book had it’s high points and low points, I wasn’t tearing through the book at a breakneck pace, but I still wanted to see what happened next.  As I stated above, I think the plot was the biggest problem with the book.  The book seemed a little too ambitious for Campbell’s skill at the time of writing this (his first published novel).  The plot made sense throughout the book, but seemed forced or rushed at times, especially when it jumps around from character to character in later chapters.  There were also a few points in the book where I thought there were viewpoint errors.  It’s written in 3rd person, and was mostly a limited perspective, but had times where we’re in one person’s perspective and then get a thought that seemed like it came from another character.  There weren’t many of these, but the ones that were there were jarring.

Overall Grade

The book was far from perfect, but had a lot of interesting aspects to it.  I’m still going to read the rest of the series, so we’ll see if Campbell focuses the future books more than this one.

5/10