This Crooked Way by James Enge
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This might be the most uneven book I've ever read.
Part of it is obviously due to it's structure. The novel is made up of a sequence of short stories. Some of them were probably going to be duds.
Don't get me wrong. Some of them are awesome. "Where Nurgnantz Dwells" is amazing, for one thing. For another, despite his general weakness in characterization*, James Enge does a surprisingly impressive job with his female characters, and the two stories with female narrators are certainly the best of the middle sequence.
On the other hand, Morlock is something of a Mary Sue. He's _always
_ one step ahead, always has the magic to win the day, or just happened to have built the bridge your standing on and knows how to knock it over. This isn't bad in and of itself, but the book gets a little tiresome, when for the 15th time, Morlock concentrates, does something impressive with Tal**, summons his magic sword and.... Yup, Morlock wins again.
I liked Blood of Ambrose because it gently and subtly rose the stakes from "oh, political intrigue." to "is Morlock and Friend or a Foe?" to "holy shit zombies!" But this book had none of that escalation. I will give some consideration to reading the next Morlock book, since I already own it,*** but probably not for a good long while.
* Part of this is a problem of the medium. It's hard to introduce good characters in a short story...
** The magic systems sucks. There, I said it.
*** Bought on the strength of Blood of Ambrose alone. Oops.
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