Book review: The Red Wolf Conspiracy
One more review for tonight: The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V. S. Redick.
This is the first book in a probable trilogy. We run out of pages just before we get to the Big Event we've been heading toward all book.
This is an interesting world with several sorts of non-human people in it. The two main viewpoint characters are engaging, and the individual chapters are tight and engaging. Unfortunately, the story as a whole is too complex and confusing. It's a tangle of plots in both the literary and standard sense of the word, and there's an unfortunate tendency to give us little bits of the story from too many viewpoints. I may be being a little too harsh on this book, because I've been distracted by stuff I've been doing on line, but I have trouble remembering what's going on and I was bothered by the shifting views of apparent loyalties as different layers of conspiracies got revealed. But against the idea that maybe I just needed to be paying closer attention, I'm beset by some apparent inconsistencies in the plot. The story is centered on a really, really big sailing ship, but some of the descriptions of just how big it is don't ring true against some of the details. The ship is really fast, except when it waits around inexplicably for characters to have adventures on shore. And there is a Big Surprise about the red wolf of the title, which was so obviously set up for the reader that the characters come across as collectively stupid for not seeing it coming.
There is a lot of promise here, but a lot of problems as well. I'm not quite sure if the story is too complicated, or if it just needed a little more tough editorial love to get it to the point where it really works. 6 out of 10.
I want a plot summary down here, but it would take hours and I need to go to sleep. Perhaps I will actually add it tomorrow.
This is the first book in a probable trilogy. We run out of pages just before we get to the Big Event we've been heading toward all book.
This is an interesting world with several sorts of non-human people in it. The two main viewpoint characters are engaging, and the individual chapters are tight and engaging. Unfortunately, the story as a whole is too complex and confusing. It's a tangle of plots in both the literary and standard sense of the word, and there's an unfortunate tendency to give us little bits of the story from too many viewpoints. I may be being a little too harsh on this book, because I've been distracted by stuff I've been doing on line, but I have trouble remembering what's going on and I was bothered by the shifting views of apparent loyalties as different layers of conspiracies got revealed. But against the idea that maybe I just needed to be paying closer attention, I'm beset by some apparent inconsistencies in the plot. The story is centered on a really, really big sailing ship, but some of the descriptions of just how big it is don't ring true against some of the details. The ship is really fast, except when it waits around inexplicably for characters to have adventures on shore. And there is a Big Surprise about the red wolf of the title, which was so obviously set up for the reader that the characters come across as collectively stupid for not seeing it coming.
There is a lot of promise here, but a lot of problems as well. I'm not quite sure if the story is too complicated, or if it just needed a little more tough editorial love to get it to the point where it really works. 6 out of 10.
I want a plot summary down here, but it would take hours and I need to go to sleep. Perhaps I will actually add it tomorrow.