Geist by Philippa Ballantine
When I picked up Geist, it looked like an interesting premise. Something like a more serious Ghostbusters organization transplanted to a vaguely Medieval setting with magic doing the work that Egon's proton packs did. I could dig that.
And dig it I did... at least for the first three quarters of the book or so.
The book begins with Sorcha, who is an Active Deacon with an organization called "the Order" from all I could gather (I have utterly no recollection of any other nomenclature for this organization). Despite all of the titling, the Order is not religious in nature and instead goes about the dirty job of banishing geists, which are essentially like ghosts. Actives and Sensitives can banish and fight them in teams. Anyway, Sorcha and her new and inexperienced Sensitive partner Merrick are called to investigate some disturbances in the far off town of Ulrich. Little do they know there is a larger nefarious plan at work (dun dun DUN!). Cue the mess.
My main complaint stems from the larger nefarious plan at work. Without getting into too many spoilers, I thought that it needed more work, specifically in the pacing department. It felt distinctly rushed and probably could have used a few hundred more pages. The big baddie never really seemed like a character, almost more of a walk on role. Also, super powers started getting pulled out of thin air to pull people's bacon out of the fire.
Also, for all the ado made about the process of Bonding and how vastly important it is to the Active and Sensitive involved, it seemed to be in a state of being both overplayed and underplayed at the same time. It felt overplayed in how ever so strange it was that Sorcha and Merrick had such a strong bond in such a short period of time and yet Sorcha's previous bonds to previous partners didn't seem to give her any trouble whatsoever. I was left with the lingering impression that there should have been some kind of limitation in the mechanics of Bonding that were not in play.
Ending aside, I liked the book overall. The characters were decently well done. I especially enjoyed how Merrick and Sorcha grated on each others nerves in the beginning. I also thought that Merrick at least had some more apparent downsides to the whole weird Bonding thing. While I wasn't particularly thrilled with Sorcha, I could at least follow and understand her lines of reasoning.
The setting was all right, although I had been hoping for more horror elements and a greater focus on geist-busting. From the politics shown, they would have been very interesting to take a look at from someone closer to the machinations than Raed.
I thought it was ok, but maybe not my cup of tea at the end of the day.
And dig it I did... at least for the first three quarters of the book or so.
The book begins with Sorcha, who is an Active Deacon with an organization called "the Order" from all I could gather (I have utterly no recollection of any other nomenclature for this organization). Despite all of the titling, the Order is not religious in nature and instead goes about the dirty job of banishing geists, which are essentially like ghosts. Actives and Sensitives can banish and fight them in teams. Anyway, Sorcha and her new and inexperienced Sensitive partner Merrick are called to investigate some disturbances in the far off town of Ulrich. Little do they know there is a larger nefarious plan at work (dun dun DUN!). Cue the mess.
My main complaint stems from the larger nefarious plan at work. Without getting into too many spoilers, I thought that it needed more work, specifically in the pacing department. It felt distinctly rushed and probably could have used a few hundred more pages. The big baddie never really seemed like a character, almost more of a walk on role. Also, super powers started getting pulled out of thin air to pull people's bacon out of the fire.
Also, for all the ado made about the process of Bonding and how vastly important it is to the Active and Sensitive involved, it seemed to be in a state of being both overplayed and underplayed at the same time. It felt overplayed in how ever so strange it was that Sorcha and Merrick had such a strong bond in such a short period of time and yet Sorcha's previous bonds to previous partners didn't seem to give her any trouble whatsoever. I was left with the lingering impression that there should have been some kind of limitation in the mechanics of Bonding that were not in play.
Ending aside, I liked the book overall. The characters were decently well done. I especially enjoyed how Merrick and Sorcha grated on each others nerves in the beginning. I also thought that Merrick at least had some more apparent downsides to the whole weird Bonding thing. While I wasn't particularly thrilled with Sorcha, I could at least follow and understand her lines of reasoning.
The setting was all right, although I had been hoping for more horror elements and a greater focus on geist-busting. From the politics shown, they would have been very interesting to take a look at from someone closer to the machinations than Raed.
I thought it was ok, but maybe not my cup of tea at the end of the day.