Grave Black Lung Review

Hi,

I've done some more reading so I've got some more reviews.

First up, we have The Black Lung Captain: A Tale of the Ketty Jay by Chris Wooding. This is a sequel to last year's wonderful Retribution Falls, a fast-paced steam-punk aerial adventure.

Retribution Falls had a fairly familiar story arc where a group of loser misfits (in this case the crew of the Ketty Jay) band together, overcome their differences and save the world. So when you've got a sequel, the question becomes "where do they go from here"? There are a couple of ways you can play it and Black Lung comes down on the side of "the people backslide into their old ways". To some extent this is a perfectly fine, perhaps even realistic, handling of the situation. After their triumph, the crew falls back into petty banditry and smuggling and their past co-operation is lost. On the other hand it's sort of a giant "reset" button that allows an author to replay the best bits of the previous story at the expense of moving things forward.

I think here the author skates the edge, but does a good job of using the backsliding to slingshot the series forward. Captain Frey has something of a mid-life crisis during the book. He's tired of being a bottom-feeder in the air pirate world and he wants to accomplish something better for himself and his crew but he's hampered by his many years of dodging responsibility.

He receives a visit from a fellow air pirate who needs the special talents of Frey's crew to scrounge an ancient shipwreck for an alien artifact. Things, of course, are not what they seem and go from bad to worse fairly quickly. There are double and triple crosses galore and the various members of the Ketty Jay have to deal with their personal demons and decide whether to stand or cut and run.

Although part of a series, this book stands pretty well on its own which earns it a bonus point. The ending also suggests that future books are going to push the characters forward and not rely on "well, things went back to the way they used to be" twist. Black Lung Captain is a fun read but I don't think this book is as strong as its predecessor. I do think that future volumes will be of some interest and this book reads a bit like a bridge between themes.

Since I've been reading through the Dresden Files RPG, it's encouraged me to pick up the series again. I only got through the first two books before I gave up. My problem was that in both books, Harry Dresden, private wizard for hire, would be handed Checkov's gun in scene one and promptly forget about it until way late in the third act and it was a little irksome to wait for him to arrive at a solution that you'd worked out by page 3.

I was told that the plotting improves substantially as the series moves along and that seems to be true with the third book in the series Grave Peril by Jim Butcher. The book starts in media res with Harry and Michael chasing down evil spirits. Michael is a Knight of the Cross and he bears a magical sword that contains one of the nails used in the crucifixion of Christ. So, it's really a Paladin/Wizard buddy cop movie in a sense. Luckily, Michael is a man of faith, but he's not an asshat Paladin.

So with the two-fisted occult action hitting right from the start, the book steers clear of the pitfalls from the earlier novels. A couple of well-handled "as you know, Bob" expositions helps fill in the details of what's going on and we're off to the races. Harry has to deal with enraged spectral beings, the machinations of the Red Court Vampires, and his faerie godmother.

The book clips along at a good pace, the action is steady and the books clearly settle into a "we're a series now so we're laying a lot of groundwork for the future". Normally that kind of thing bugs me, but I can hardly say I wasn't warned. Oh, and the mystery is pretty decent as well. The one potential pitfall that can happen with these occult detective books is that because the rules of magic are built from scratch, it's possible to get blind-sided by a solution because you don't know what the ground rules are. In fact, the Dresden books have had to parcel out a lot of "this is how magic works" stuff in order to give the reader a firm footing to understand the solution. Again, this is generally handled pretty well, but you always wonder if you're being set up to be mislead or if a convenient explanation is being fashioned to resolve an issue.

In this case, I think they did pretty well. The central mystery has a solution that draws on, but does not depend on the magical world-building in the book. I do notice that the power of "True Names" has been significantly downgraded in this book (at least for non-magical mortals). Harry also deals with the "you must be invited in" issue for the first time if I recall. It's a fine line to walk, I'll be curious to see how well later books maintain consistency.

Anyway, that's what's been on my plate lately
Tom

Grave Black Lung Review

Hi,

I've done some more reading so I've got some more reviews.

First up, we have The Black Lung Captain: A Tale of the Ketty Jay by Chris Wooding. This is a sequel to last year's wonderful Retribution Falls, a fast-paced steam-punk aerial adventure.

Retribution Falls had a fairly familiar story arc where a group of loser misfits (in this case the crew of the Ketty Jay) band together, overcome their differences and save the world. So when you've got a sequel, the question becomes "where do they go from here"? There are a couple of ways you can play it and Black Lung comes down on the side of "the people backslide into their old ways". To some extent this is a perfectly fine, perhaps even realistic, handling of the situation. After their triumph, the crew falls back into petty banditry and smuggling and their past co-operation is lost. On the other hand it's sort of a giant "reset" button that allows an author to replay the best bits of the previous story at the expense of moving things forward.

I think here the author skates the edge, but does a good job of using the backsliding to slingshot the series forward. Captain Frey has something of a mid-life crisis during the book. He's tired of being a bottom-feeder in the air pirate world and he wants to accomplish something better for himself and his crew but he's hampered by his many years of dodging responsibility.

He receives a visit from a fellow air pirate who needs the special talents of Frey's crew to scrounge an ancient shipwreck for an alien artifact. Things, of course, are not what they seem and go from bad to worse fairly quickly. There are double and triple crosses galore and the various members of the Ketty Jay have to deal with their personal demons and decide whether to stand or cut and run.

Although part of a series, this book stands pretty well on its own which earns it a bonus point. The ending also suggests that future books are going to push the characters forward and not rely on "well, things went back to the way they used to be" twist. Black Lung Captain is a fun read but I don't think this book is as strong as its predecessor. I do think that future volumes will be of some interest and this book reads a bit like a bridge between themes.

Since I've been reading through the Dresden Files RPG, it's encouraged me to pick up the series again. I only got through the first two books before I gave up. My problem was that in both books, Harry Dresden, private wizard for hire, would be handed Checkov's gun in scene one and promptly forget about it until way late in the third act and it was a little irksome to wait for him to arrive at a solution that you'd worked out by page 3.

I was told that the plotting improves substantially as the series moves along and that seems to be true with the third book in the series Grave Peril by Jim Butcher. The book starts in media res with Harry and Michael chasing down evil spirits. Michael is a Knight of the Cross and he bears a magical sword that contains one of the nails used in the crucifixion of Christ. So, it's really a Paladin/Wizard buddy cop movie in a sense. Luckily, Michael is a man of faith, but he's not an asshat Paladin.

So with the two-fisted occult action hitting right from the start, the book steers clear of the pitfalls from the earlier novels. A couple of well-handled "as you know, Bob" expositions helps fill in the details of what's going on and we're off to the races. Harry has to deal with enraged spectral beings, the machinations of the Red Court Vampires, and his faerie godmother.

The book clips along at a good pace, the action is steady and the books clearly settle into a "we're a series now so we're laying a lot of groundwork for the future". Normally that kind of thing bugs me, but I can hardly say I wasn't warned. Oh, and the mystery is pretty decent as well. The one potential pitfall that can happen with these occult detective books is that because the rules of magic are built from scratch, it's possible to get blind-sided by a solution because you don't know what the ground rules are. In fact, the Dresden books have had to parcel out a lot of "this is how magic works" stuff in order to give the reader a firm footing to understand the solution. Again, this is generally handled pretty well, but you always wonder if you're being set up to be mislead or if a convenient explanation is being fashioned to resolve an issue.

In this case, I think they did pretty well. The central mystery has a solution that draws on, but does not depend on the magical world-building in the book. I do notice that the power of "True Names" has been significantly downgraded in this book (at least for non-magical mortals). Harry also deals with the "you must be invited in" issue for the first time if I recall. It's a fine line to walk, I'll be curious to see how well later books maintain consistency.

Anyway, that's what's been on my plate lately
Tom