The Court of Air by Stephen Hunt

Aug 22, 2013 19:30

In Stephen Hunt's The Court of Air, streetwise orphan Molly Templar unexpectedly finds herself the target of a band of killers that butchered her whole orphan workhouse while looking for her. Young Oliver Brooks is framed for the murder of his uncle and, like Molly, he too has to flee for his life and learn what secret he's being targeted for. The two of them along with a variety of allies will soon battle an ancient evil that's a threat to all civilization.

The worldbuilding on this is great and inventive--science and steampunk and magic and a race of steam-powered robots who have robot spirits they can call on and occasionally sentient holy weapons and horrific insect gods worshiped by a bloodthirsty underground civilization and...--while the book doesn't bog down in a lot of exposition to reveal it. (The steampunk elements are familiar enough these days that he barely has to explain them for the reader, but he has so much other creative stuff going on alongside that.) The worldbuilding is so good that I'm in the weird position of feeling that the characters and plot weren't worthy of it. The characters are often flat--I didn't emotionally connect with any of them--and one gets a sudden new personality transplant, due to cursed weapons, that isn't an improvement. Sometimes you feel like you need a scorecard for all the organizations, movements, races, and conspiracies wandering around.

There's a 30-50-page section where the story should really be revving up, given the events involved, yet the book goes flat. It does pick up again later, at least.

I recommend it for the worldbuilding but with the above caveats. The author has a few standalone novels set in this world, so I'm ordering a copy of the next one, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, from the library and hoping for better everything else.

fantasy, sci-fi, books

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