Slowly catching up on the recent great reads
One of the books that accompanied me on holidays was Sherwood Smith's fantasy novel Inda. It was a good choice - nice and solid to outlast those periods of boredom at airports etc - but also bad as I was increasingly reluctant to put it down and, you know, go and see the things I went away to see.
The story starts with 10-year-old* Inda being called away from his home - an estate he expects to defend when he is an adult for his older brother - to the Royal Academy to be trained with other second sons. This part reminded me slightly of Ender's game because of the military training, and the need for younger children to outwit older ones, but it wasn't as freaky as Ender. Over the course of 6 (?) years the subsequent plot involves lots of political intrigue, ships and pirates. Yay! I was quite cranky at the end as I didn't have the next book to hand to read - sorry in advance to other fans who can now tell me how long THEY had to wait :)
I was very impressed by the characters in the book, especially the ones who started off as baddies but ended up being complicated and mixed. The social set-up was lovely and complex and evolved in a way that made it feel real. I had been warned that it might be difficult to follow the character names in Inda due to a wide array of titles, nicknames etc but perhaps the warning actually made me pay attention because I didn't think it was too bad. However, as in real life I do tend to be a bit casual about names (I think I tend to go with context) so here is a list Sherwood Smith has put up at her website for more organised readers than me.
All up, a great book for when you feel like a nice fat fantasy!
The story starts with 10-year-old* Inda being called away from his home - an estate he expects to defend when he is an adult for his older brother - to the Royal Academy to be trained with other second sons. This part reminded me slightly of Ender's game because of the military training, and the need for younger children to outwit older ones, but it wasn't as freaky as Ender. Over the course of 6 (?) years the subsequent plot involves lots of political intrigue, ships and pirates. Yay! I was quite cranky at the end as I didn't have the next book to hand to read - sorry in advance to other fans who can now tell me how long THEY had to wait :)
I was very impressed by the characters in the book, especially the ones who started off as baddies but ended up being complicated and mixed. The social set-up was lovely and complex and evolved in a way that made it feel real. I had been warned that it might be difficult to follow the character names in Inda due to a wide array of titles, nicknames etc but perhaps the warning actually made me pay attention because I didn't think it was too bad. However, as in real life I do tend to be a bit casual about names (I think I tend to go with context) so here is a list Sherwood Smith has put up at her website for more organised readers than me.
All up, a great book for when you feel like a nice fat fantasy!