Sworn Grifters of Watt O'Review
May. 13th, 2014 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
Once again, I prove that once I start reading something I will generally finish it. Even if it's pretty terrible, but before the terrible, something pretty good instead.
So I recently finished Sworn in Steel by Douglis Hulick. This is the long, long delayed sequel to Among Thieves which I rather enjoyed. At the end of that book, street-level fixer Drothe foiled a plot to overthrow the empire and found himself elevated to the heady rank of Grey Prince, one of the shadowly overlords of the underworld in the capital city of Ildrecca.
This new book picks up some three months after as Drothe is attemptin to get his fledgling organization settled and stable. Unfortunately, hia hard work might all be for nsught since one of his daggers ends up in the body of a fellow Grey Prince he'd been negotiating with under a truce. It's all a frame-up, of course, a member of the Degans wants Drothe to track down his former companion who disappeared at the end of book one. Anxious to set things right with his former friend (and to clear his reputation as an oathbreaker), Drothe heads off to the Despotate of Djan with a theater troupe providing him cover. In an unfamiliar city hostile to Imperials such as himself, Drothe soon finds himself up to his neck in trouble.
I don't know if it quite hits Locke Lamora levels of good, but the book is intersting and clips right along. The only part that was a little weak was how Drothe manages his elevations from small-time hood to Grey Prince. He has conflicting ideas, people give him conflicting advice, but I'm not sure that we ever really see him make a solid decision one way or another about what he wants to be and how he's going to get to that point. Still, it's a fun read that hangs together pretty well and really opens up the world that was introduced in Among Thieves.
After that...it's all downhill.
I stared with Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihlio Adventure) by Robert Kroese. It's supposed to be a comedy sci-fi tale about feckless grifter Rex Nihlio and how he accidentally saves the universe. It's mostly a riff on Star Wars and it's just not all that humorous. Often times you can see the jokes coming from miles away and the ones you don't are still dumb. I really wouldn't bother.
Then I picked up The Ghosts of Watt O'Hugh: BEING THE FIRST PART OF THE STRANGE AND ASTOUNDING MEMOIRS OF WATT O'HUGH by Steven S. Drachman. That whole FIRST PART thing means you know it doesn't end well. So Watt O'Hugh is a western adventure cowboy who's often saved from death by mysterious ghosts and he has the power to jump thorugh time (although not to change it). He writes to us from 1936, one year before his death to some future audience (although really it's us), to talk about his life. He mostly discusses how he was shanghaied into helping JP Morgan go after a former business associate who is building a private army in his magical Shangri-La out in Montana. Hugh escapes from Morgan's plots only to be saved by a group of time-travelling do-gooders who also want him to take out the aforementioned Shangri-La. Watt only wants to help just long enough to save the love of his life.
So the big problems here are 1.) there are a couple of big events in Watt's past are only alluded to, 2.) The book was clearly aimed at a reading audience from the mid-2000's -- which, fine, Watt can see the future and he could just address his readership, but the narration seems much less certain who will find his memoirs which give it this weird incongruous flavor, and 3.) the book just does not get enough traction to make you care about part 2. There's just a mish-mash of ideas and nothing ever really gels together.
So I'm hoping the summer's reading will pick up a bit. There's some intersting-looking stuff on the horizon.
later
Tom
Once again, I prove that once I start reading something I will generally finish it. Even if it's pretty terrible, but before the terrible, something pretty good instead.
So I recently finished Sworn in Steel by Douglis Hulick. This is the long, long delayed sequel to Among Thieves which I rather enjoyed. At the end of that book, street-level fixer Drothe foiled a plot to overthrow the empire and found himself elevated to the heady rank of Grey Prince, one of the shadowly overlords of the underworld in the capital city of Ildrecca.
This new book picks up some three months after as Drothe is attemptin to get his fledgling organization settled and stable. Unfortunately, hia hard work might all be for nsught since one of his daggers ends up in the body of a fellow Grey Prince he'd been negotiating with under a truce. It's all a frame-up, of course, a member of the Degans wants Drothe to track down his former companion who disappeared at the end of book one. Anxious to set things right with his former friend (and to clear his reputation as an oathbreaker), Drothe heads off to the Despotate of Djan with a theater troupe providing him cover. In an unfamiliar city hostile to Imperials such as himself, Drothe soon finds himself up to his neck in trouble.
I don't know if it quite hits Locke Lamora levels of good, but the book is intersting and clips right along. The only part that was a little weak was how Drothe manages his elevations from small-time hood to Grey Prince. He has conflicting ideas, people give him conflicting advice, but I'm not sure that we ever really see him make a solid decision one way or another about what he wants to be and how he's going to get to that point. Still, it's a fun read that hangs together pretty well and really opens up the world that was introduced in Among Thieves.
After that...it's all downhill.
I stared with Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihlio Adventure) by Robert Kroese. It's supposed to be a comedy sci-fi tale about feckless grifter Rex Nihlio and how he accidentally saves the universe. It's mostly a riff on Star Wars and it's just not all that humorous. Often times you can see the jokes coming from miles away and the ones you don't are still dumb. I really wouldn't bother.
Then I picked up The Ghosts of Watt O'Hugh: BEING THE FIRST PART OF THE STRANGE AND ASTOUNDING MEMOIRS OF WATT O'HUGH by Steven S. Drachman. That whole FIRST PART thing means you know it doesn't end well. So Watt O'Hugh is a western adventure cowboy who's often saved from death by mysterious ghosts and he has the power to jump thorugh time (although not to change it). He writes to us from 1936, one year before his death to some future audience (although really it's us), to talk about his life. He mostly discusses how he was shanghaied into helping JP Morgan go after a former business associate who is building a private army in his magical Shangri-La out in Montana. Hugh escapes from Morgan's plots only to be saved by a group of time-travelling do-gooders who also want him to take out the aforementioned Shangri-La. Watt only wants to help just long enough to save the love of his life.
So the big problems here are 1.) there are a couple of big events in Watt's past are only alluded to, 2.) The book was clearly aimed at a reading audience from the mid-2000's -- which, fine, Watt can see the future and he could just address his readership, but the narration seems much less certain who will find his memoirs which give it this weird incongruous flavor, and 3.) the book just does not get enough traction to make you care about part 2. There's just a mish-mash of ideas and nothing ever really gels together.
So I'm hoping the summer's reading will pick up a bit. There's some intersting-looking stuff on the horizon.
later
Tom
