Rating: 5 out of 5
I had difficulties beginning this book. For one, I started with ugh something else and decided four chapters in that that story was not for me (at least not right now). I then thought what else I could find which would be interesting for me to read and I remember Mr Parker whose books of the Siege trilogy I so very enjoyed a couple of years ago. In his works, for some reason this title stood out as the most interesting and from the moment I started it, I enjoyed every second, often relegating sleep to a second position to carry through with one more POV that day.
What makes this title so enjoyable? The worlds that the author builds are always interesting, they ask for the reader’s attention and they often come with a fair bit of action though indeed the main protagonist in this probably is the one who starts out with the least action-packed story. This would be Valens, a relatively young boy who grows up during the first title. What about the other characters? The engineer Vaatzes is the second one to bring out for me given his ubiquitous nature behind everything that will take place in this book, though it starts out all so inadvertently. Who would be the third main character? Probably Miel or Orsua, who both feature quite a bit – between these two, I will say that my original impression of liking Orsua was fully reversed by the end of the title.
And what of the action here? There are a lot of descriptions of engineering equipment and principles, especially when and where we are involved with the Mezentines. Some of these to a degree that I am sure several readers may find mind numbing. However, I think this is only an aspect that serves to characterise the way the main characters – of at least one nation – think about their own world and how it works. We get glimpses of the other civilisations, mostly focussing on the two relatively similar (mountain) duchies. These are meant to represent typical aristocratic societies where the noblesse oblige principles has not yet gone out of vogue. The most interesting – and I suspect the most relevant a few chapters into the next two volumes – will probably turn out to be the so-called savages from beyond the desert. The little that we see our hear about their culture goes to indicate how wrong both the mountain duchies and the Mezentines are about them.
Overall, I’m keen on starting the next volume!
