This book had me at 'The crowd pressed in close to the pilings, jostling against each other, collecting like a blood clot in an open wound'. It really set the tone for the rest of the book.
I'm not a big fan of spice in my reading material, so there were many scenes that made me super uncomfortable (if you know, you know). The problem with an audiobook is that I can't really skip them.
I got to the point where i had an hour left and picked up book 2. Needed the story to not end. When I hit the ending, I knew I'd made the right call.
Everyone’s tired, Captain. Everyone is just bones and exhaustion in this city.
Wow, this book took me ages to read, didn't it? And it wasn't just because of its size. I'm not quite sure why I had to drag myself through some parts, because I mostly really liked it. There's a lot of originality here. The plot is built on one of my favorite tropes: magic users getting heavily regulated and contained by people in power. The characters are all fully developed and well-written, and the MC is basically a Lawful Good person who realizes he can be either lawful or good. There's interesting politics. The setting is nuanced and rich. The plot has a lot of interesting twists. Overall, this is definitely a book I'm going to recommend to people.
However, I think the story could benefit from being tightened up. There were a lot of scenes here that …
Everyone’s tired, Captain. Everyone is just bones and exhaustion in this city.
Wow, this book took me ages to read, didn't it? And it wasn't just because of its size. I'm not quite sure why I had to drag myself through some parts, because I mostly really liked it. There's a lot of originality here. The plot is built on one of my favorite tropes: magic users getting heavily regulated and contained by people in power. The characters are all fully developed and well-written, and the MC is basically a Lawful Good person who realizes he can be either lawful or good. There's interesting politics. The setting is nuanced and rich. The plot has a lot of interesting twists. Overall, this is definitely a book I'm going to recommend to people.
However, I think the story could benefit from being tightened up. There were a lot of scenes here that didn't directly serve the larger plot. I didn't mind some of them, because they deepened my understanding of the characters and the world around them. However, there was just a lot of repetition, like Stella constantly thinking about Tashué’ being a tinman for paragraphs on end. Those parts grew frustrating fast—I found myself skimming over them, thinking, Yeah, okay, okay, I get it, I've read it 10 times already, and I'm afraid that led me to perhaps skipping some new details presented alongside those repetitions.
At the same time, the plot was generally well-constructed, with so many hidden truths getting skillfully revealed at the precisely right times to completely overthrow my perception of what was going on, while also making complete sense. The backstory facts came fully into play. Etc, etc. But this deftly crafted and already complex narrative was at times obscured by those needless repetitions and detours. Most of the book is complex in a very good way, but parts of it got overcomplicated in a bad way, if that makes sense? And that's why I can't really give it 5 stars.
In spite of those structural problems, I'll state again that the story has a lot of great things going for it and it's definitely made a lasting impression on me. Tashué’, Stella, Jason, Lorne, and all the other characters will stay rent-free in my head for a while. And so will the grim, gleaming city of Yaelsmuir—perhaps the best new setting I got acquainted with in a while.
Review of 'Legacy of the Brightwash' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Powerful, character-driven, and dark. Throughout the book, there's a powerful sense of impending tragedy, which is a neat trick in a volume that opens with a dead, mutilated child, but the characters and sharp prose kept me edging back to read just a little bit more. Matar has crafted a compelling fantasy world that is believably dark: many of the terrible things may be rooted in the fantasy setting, but what makes them truly terrible is how believably human the worst parts of it are. Amid that, she has drawn compelling romance, class struggles, haunted pasts, police drama, political intrigue and more.
This book is a character-driven novel, rather than plot-driven. There are twists and turns of external struggle, and those are cleverly realized, but the central arc of the novel is not those external events, but rather the personal evolution of the primary protagonist. That's an important point to …
Powerful, character-driven, and dark. Throughout the book, there's a powerful sense of impending tragedy, which is a neat trick in a volume that opens with a dead, mutilated child, but the characters and sharp prose kept me edging back to read just a little bit more. Matar has crafted a compelling fantasy world that is believably dark: many of the terrible things may be rooted in the fantasy setting, but what makes them truly terrible is how believably human the worst parts of it are. Amid that, she has drawn compelling romance, class struggles, haunted pasts, police drama, political intrigue and more.
This book is a character-driven novel, rather than plot-driven. There are twists and turns of external struggle, and those are cleverly realized, but the central arc of the novel is not those external events, but rather the personal evolution of the primary protagonist. That's an important point to understand, I think, because the novel is framed around that character's personal progression, rather than his external struggles. The external plot essentially ends on a cliffhanger, which is a little jarring if you approach the story as a sequence of worldly happenings. I would have preferred the external story to have included a little bit more of a denouement, but it's hard to fault the first book in a series for leaving me wanting more.
The character work here is truly exceptional. Any of the central cast, and quite a few of the passersby, seem like they could easily step into the role of protagonist, but their time on stage is carefully managed so that none ever quite outshine the lead.
