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igenlodeI had vaguely come across the premise of this series, but hadn't realised that this book was in fact a sequel to a preceding volume; I just assumed that we were getting some detailed backstory at the start of the book, which begins after all pretty much in medias res, with our heroine capturing a pirate ship single-handed, in what is gradually revealed to be a deliberate set-up after being presented as a damsel-in-distress scenario (and that, so far as I can tell, is *not* a recap of events from the previous book, but is genuine backstory explaining how she came to be part of a pirate crew!) I also hadn't realised that this was a 'Young Adult' novel -- but then so far as I can tell the entire fantasy genre is being marketed at teenagers these days...
I'm afraid this is another case of a book that I enjoyed enough at the start to pick up and keep reading, but which I found myself progressively less enthused by as I continued. I didn't dislike Lila (the narrative keeps reminding us that this is short for 'Delilah', which is just as well, since I cannot for the life of me remember that it is *not* pronounced with a long E in the form of the Лила that I keep mentally hearing!) as much as some of the young female reviewers at whom the character was presumably aimed in the first place, but I didn't side with her as much as I think we were supposed to -- and the sudden ObGay from two characters who have neither of them shown any indications in that direction until that moment (I'm guessing that the backstory between them *must* have been in the previous book and we were presumed to know about it) was a jolt that turned me right off. 'Athos' and 'Rhy' (instead of Rhys) as character names also kept giving rise to double-takes!
The 'world-building' felt quite subtle, in that there were a lots of bits of language and info being mentioned in the background as if we already knew them -- but of course, if this was a sequel that makes the achievement rather less notable. The time-period is first hinted at and then established explicitly with the death of George III... but almost the entire novel takes place outside 'Grey London', i.e. our own non-magical historical era, and 'Red London' isn't 'Regency' in any sense, whether in technology, costume, social mores or geopolitical concerns. This is basically simply a straight fantasy thriller with only a few nods to the parallel-worlds concept, although it was clearly a major part of the previous book; the story of this book is of how the survivors of that inter-world conflict are dealing with their new-found situation.
Like "Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire", it also has a large and ultimately somewhat pointless magical tournament, in which all the main characters end up getting entered despite the fact that only one of them is able to do so openly under his own identity (and none of them know therefore that the others are in it). None of the protagonists actually win, which is an interesting choice of plotline, but makes the outcome and indeed the event itself feel largely irrelevant. Possibly there are international consequences to be had in the sequel from having all the foreign grandees assembled in London when Things Go Wrong, but I'm afraid I simply wasn't invested enough by that point to want to read the rest of the series, so we shall never find out.
(Lila comes across particularly badly in comparison with the seventeen-year-old Charis of The Beacon at Alexandria, who is an adult in a book aimed at adults; I don't know how old Lila is supposed to be...)
I'm afraid this is another case of a book that I enjoyed enough at the start to pick up and keep reading, but which I found myself progressively less enthused by as I continued. I didn't dislike Lila (the narrative keeps reminding us that this is short for 'Delilah', which is just as well, since I cannot for the life of me remember that it is *not* pronounced with a long E in the form of the Лила that I keep mentally hearing!) as much as some of the young female reviewers at whom the character was presumably aimed in the first place, but I didn't side with her as much as I think we were supposed to -- and the sudden ObGay from two characters who have neither of them shown any indications in that direction until that moment (I'm guessing that the backstory between them *must* have been in the previous book and we were presumed to know about it) was a jolt that turned me right off. 'Athos' and 'Rhy' (instead of Rhys) as character names also kept giving rise to double-takes!
The 'world-building' felt quite subtle, in that there were a lots of bits of language and info being mentioned in the background as if we already knew them -- but of course, if this was a sequel that makes the achievement rather less notable. The time-period is first hinted at and then established explicitly with the death of George III... but almost the entire novel takes place outside 'Grey London', i.e. our own non-magical historical era, and 'Red London' isn't 'Regency' in any sense, whether in technology, costume, social mores or geopolitical concerns. This is basically simply a straight fantasy thriller with only a few nods to the parallel-worlds concept, although it was clearly a major part of the previous book; the story of this book is of how the survivors of that inter-world conflict are dealing with their new-found situation.
Like "Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire", it also has a large and ultimately somewhat pointless magical tournament, in which all the main characters end up getting entered despite the fact that only one of them is able to do so openly under his own identity (and none of them know therefore that the others are in it). None of the protagonists actually win, which is an interesting choice of plotline, but makes the outcome and indeed the event itself feel largely irrelevant. Possibly there are international consequences to be had in the sequel from having all the foreign grandees assembled in London when Things Go Wrong, but I'm afraid I simply wasn't invested enough by that point to want to read the rest of the series, so we shall never find out.
(Lila comes across particularly badly in comparison with the seventeen-year-old Charis of The Beacon at Alexandria, who is an adult in a book aimed at adults; I don't know how old Lila is supposed to be...)
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Date: 2026-04-03 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-03 02:38 am (UTC)I'm not clear whether Alucard (another confusing name) Emery was actually a new character introduced for this book, or whether he had in fact had his backstory featured 'live' in the previous volume...