Profil

The first half of the book is full of the promises one could expect after reading the first two : more clues, more local mysteries, more answers. I can't say I feel entirely satisfied, even though there's a lot of good moments. I can't say much about the second part without spoiling, but I felt it veered into horror a bit, and while the plot is extremely surprising, a bit of frustration lingers. I'll be looking for more answers in the fourth book I guess.

So here's the second volume of the series and as it's almost double the size, there's a change of pace in the story. Now it's a long march east in hostile land, with its challenges and encounters, and it will take up until the end to have a bit more revelations and clues as to what's really going on. There are some really interesting parts and a few that are a bit boring or repetitive (then again, the land itself seems very repetitive), but all in all, it's well worth it!

So, take a few fantasy tropes (wizards, dragons, barbarians...), twist them a bit (two smart women travelling together, one of them a barbarian), add an interesting take on magic and knowledge and who has it and shares it -- or not, and you would have already a pretty interesting novel. But the author adds a deeper layer with hints and unsettling details, and a few more obvious clues near the end, and suddenly you're not entirely sure what story you've been reading. I think I'll get on the three following books, because I've grown very curious about how it will all be explained. So no, there won't be a lot of answers at the end of this one, which is frustrating. But it's a quite brilliant introduction to something very very original.

It's a short novella with a bit of a convoluted plot and mystery, but I found the characters amazingly fleshed out. There was something almost poetic in the world and the way they all navigate it, not everything is explained or described thoroughly, which leaves questions but also a lot to interpret.

There was a lot of interesting elements in that first novel of a trilogy, with the worldbuilding, magic and beliefs system. The characters were also mostly engaging, but I didn't feel like I needed to start the second book of the series immediately. Maybe it just means that my expectations were too high.

This book had been on my lists for ages, before I even knew who was Arundhati Roy, and I was surprised that it took me a while to like it. There was something holding me back a little. It's a slow drama, like a train crash in slow motion, often foreshadowed through the labyrinthine construction between the present and different times in the past. Eventually, it started to make sense and the incredible writing gripped me.

It took me a while to finish this one, not because it's boring, quite the contrary. There is plenty of action, and Harrow makes you care about her characters in such a way that the tension and set-backs are almost too much at times. As in her other novels, she knows how to dig in the themes of loss, anger and reconciliation. Her vivid prose drips metaphors much better than this one, and her use and reinterpretation of fairy tales and children rhymes is really interesting. A fun and terrific book!