Robins, Lane: Maledicte
Maledicte
Writer: Lane Robins
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 434
I want to say that I'd heard about this book before I'd heard it was penned by an Odyssey graduate. I'm not entirely positive that's the case, but I'm pretty darn sure. Anyway, it was Robins's status as an Odfellow that grabbed my interest, so I was pleased when emerald_ibis picked this title as our September/October challenge.
The first thing you need to know about this book is that it's a dark fantasy. Not as erotic as Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart, it's still dark, so full of anti-heroes that it'd make The Count of Monte Cristo's Edmond Dantes run screaming. And I say that with much fondness, as The Count of Monte Cristo is probably my favorite classical novel ever, and I found Maledicte an intriguing cross between that and Carey.
But remember, save for one, these characters are not likable. And that's a good thing. :)
I say it's a good thing because I truly think there's room in the fantasy and science fiction genres for characters who aren't sympathetic but are fascinating anyway. After all, aren't we all attracted to the well-developed villain? Don't we love Han Solo's rogue antics over Luke Skywalker's pure heroics?
The characters that populate Maledicte are human, and disturbingly so. Gilly (I still don't know if I should pronounce that with a hard or soft "g") is the only truly heroic character, and even he's flawed during the course of the book. Maledicte, aka Miranda, fascinated me and worried me. If not for Ani's possession of him/her (and Miranda's bleak, narrow-minded determination in the prologue), I'm not sure I could've bought the character hook, line and sinker. Janus I wanted to like at first, but as the book progressed, I started seeing his true colors, and his loss of Mal at the end couldn't be more fitting.
The book opened up a bit on the rough side. I'm not sure it was necessary to get Krito's POV, as I would've much rather gotten the whole scene from Miranda and maybe seen Miranda/Janus at work from the inside before their bond is destroyed. The POV is really shifty here: it's this loose omniscient third where narrative uses everyone's names even though the "pov" character doesn't know them. It got a little jarring, especially in first chapter and beyond, where that odd POV lingered. Not quite head-hopping, but it took a little while for the narrative to ground itself properly to one POV character per scene, but once it did, I didn't mind the liberties taken afterwards.
It reads fast. There's definite intrigue, and even though I had no real sense of the direction of the plot (I mean, Maledicte's goals are obvious, he wants to kill Last, but the book's thicker than that plot, so you know something more is at stake), I couldn't wait to figure out whose secrets would be discovered by whom, and just how deep a hole Maledicte would dig himself.
And I must say, this book is fantastically plotted. I think think every seemingly minor detail played later importance, and I applaud the fact that I got so wrapped up in the current action that I ended up forgetting about the equally important subplots. Well done.
Go figure that the truly good character in the book ends up has to be the one rescued, and I loved Robins's handling of Maledicte's predicaments. He/she always finds a way to rescue his/herself.
Also well handled was the complete believability of Maledicte's persona. The only time the male character faltered was during the scenes with Janus, and then some of the believability slipped, as part of me wanted Mal to truly be male, rather than reading sex scenes with a masculine pronoun but feminine actions. It was a little disconcerting, but by the end, I had no trouble seeing Mal as both sexes, not one or the other.
It's a good book. It's no where near as erotically graphic as Kushiel's Dart, but it's dark in its violence. While reading, I thought this book wouldn't be dark enough for my tastes, but by time I reached the end, I was like, "Huh. Okay, I take that back. It's PLENTY dark."
The world is also interesting, but there's a part of me that hopes that if Robins chooses to write other volumes in this world that she picks a different cast of characters (after all, we only met one god, and there's quite a few others). I'm not sure I can handle seeing Mal go through his blood-lust again, to say the least. However, if Robins writes it, I'll read it, because I'd be honestly curious just what she'd do to make a sequel featuring Mal different than this.
Next up: Wings to the Kingdom by Cherie Priest