attackfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
attackfish) wrote2009-05-30 12:38 am
attackfish) wrote2009-05-30 12:38 am
Entry tags:
The Magic Theif, Books One and Two by Sarah Prineas: Find Your Locus
When I saw that author Sarah Prineas was offering a signed copy of her most recent book, The Magic Thief: Lost to anyone willing to post a review of it on their blog and on the major book seller sites, I jumped at it, and besides which ran out to buy the first book. After all, it's a Middle Grade secondary world fantasy with a steampunk slant. Right there it pushes a lot of my favorite literary buttons.
Conn is a street smart thief from Wellmet's downtrodden Twilight district. He knows he's lucky. The Underlord may have put a word out on him and he might be poor as dirt, but he isn't dead yet, or crippled, or sick. And he has Quick Hands. So when a well dressed man walks close by, he reaches into his purse and grabs a whole mess of trouble, because the man is a wizard, and stealing from a wizard isn't something anyone wants to do unless they also want to die...
The first thing I want to say about The Magic Thief actually has nothing directly to do with the text at all. After so many books with stock image covers and photomanipulations, it leaves me with a big fat warm fuzzy feeling to see a good illustrated cover again!
That being said, what I found inside didn't excite me too much. There were so many areas of the world I wanted to explore that weren't in the book, and I kept getting bored with the parts I did get to see. Everything felt a bit colorless and I got more of a feel for the world from the illustrations and the cover of the books than I got from the text itself. Some of you may know how truly terrible my visual comprehension is, and those few of you know exactly how much that means. The characters all seamed wooden and one dimensional to me, which was expecially bad, because the book was in first person. Rivalries, friendships, and dialogue were all really forced.
Most of all, Conn's life on the street just didn't strike me as risky enough. Writing that feels really stupid, because Prineas gave us readers a whole slew of reasons why his street life was deeply dangerous from what happened to his mother, to that the Underlord wanted to do to him, but there was no feeling of urgency or fear, and Conn treated getting off the streets as some sort of adventure as opposed to a ticket out of the gutter.
That being said, there were plenty of things I did like about the book. I managed to, by implication, get something of a feel for the politics of Wellmet, and I'm such a sucker for that. The first chapter when Conn steals Nevery's Locus had such a delightfully creepy feel, and the Academicos had the proper air of pompousness. I also like the way magic is a sentient living being, fully capable of articulating its desires, and also capable of dying.
Likewise, I love Nevery's confusion as to what to do with Conn and his frustration when Conn can't be like the other much better educated, much more privileged wizards' apprentices.
When Conn needs to find a new way to talk to the Magic, he takes on some of Nevery's bad habits and starts experimenting with Pyrotechnics. People are turning to stone, and Wellmet's Magic is under attack. But if he gets caught, he could be exiled, or worse...
Prineas did improve somewhat from the first book in book two, but many of the same flaws evident in book one remained or became even more pronounced. The characters remained flat, and Pettivox, a decent villain with a lovely motivation of greed who liked political maneuverings (did I mention I'm a sucker for political maneuverings?) was killed off in book one only to be replaced with Jaggus. From the cover illustration, I was fully prepared to like him as a villain, especially since I initially mistook his turban (or turbanesque hair, I'm not quite sure) for a powdered wig, which in a steampunk world would be awesomely retro and might have a cool backstory. Instead, however, Prineas gives us readers a king from a Middle Eastern stand in, manipulated and possibly possessed by an evil Magic, and who is weak willed, deceptive, oily diplomat. I can't even begin to catalog the problematic implications of that!
Also, a new thin began to bother me, that might have been in the first book but that I failed to notice. I can't tell exactly how old the characters are supposed to be. Now I know a staple of certain forms of childrens adventure novels is that the children have either lenient or easily escaped guardians (I remember in elementary school we used to brag to each other about what our parents let us do, and it wasn't until high school we started bragging about things our parents didn't let us do but we did anyway) and that it's a potent form of wish fulfillment, but if I'm reading our protagonist and Rowen correctly, they're between eight and ten, and no monarch who doesn't want to go to war or have their precious progeny taken hostage would send a kid that young as the leader of a diplomatic party to a likely hostile foreign ruler! I think even at ten I would have been thrown a bit at that. Conn's freedoms are much better explained. He has a somewhat ambivalent guardian.
I really liked Kerrn, though. A hardbitten guard lady with mixed feelings about the hero is a wonderful thing in any story. Likewise, in the illustrations, the Egyptian temple look to Jaggus' fortress was entirely too cool for words. Also, there is something deeply attractive about Conn messing with explosives in the beginning, little boys playing with fire comes to mind. Near the beginning, when Conn is worried about asking Rowen for what he sees as an exorbitant amount of money, but does anyway, only to be asked "Is that all?" says more about the kind of sheltered life Rowen has led compared to Conn than anything else in the book. Prineas has also tightened up her prose in the second book, and it was interesting to see that growth.
Now for a bit of analysis relating to both books, I spent a lot of my time reading (and this increased my enjoyment considerably) spotting Prineas' influences. She mentions in an interview that she likes Megan Whalen Turner's books, and the absorption is obvious. Not only is Conn a thief under the control of an older powerful man known for his wisdom, but he also has a shortened name when his full name will become an important plot point. Gen's full name is simply a court name that references his god and his status, whereas Conn's is a "true name" (Actually, what is up with the true names in these books anyway? It's not tied into the magic system or political system or world at all, and I suspect that unless it's resolved in the third book that they're there because Prineas liked them in myth and other fantasies and so co-opted them without a real place for them) that references his familial connection to the Underlord. Furthermore, Jaggus' fall to his death references countless childrens movies as a way to keep the hero's hands clean, and also references Gen and his god, where a thief's physical fall is seen as his god letting him go. Since Jaggus falls when the magic has no more use for him...
I also smell a bit of Tolkien and Dianna Wynne Jones in the story. Firstly, there are the runes. Their point other than an amusement for children (and adult) that way inclined who read the story, escapes me, but the use of such games is a simplified and less extreme form of Tolkien's language creation. There are also Jonesish plot elements to be found sprinkled throughout the books, especially in Prineas' way of throwing in twist after twist and then winding it all up in the last several hundred words.
You know, after writing all this, I feel like a horrible person, because I got one of the books free and signed. Oh dear.
All told, I think I will probably contrive a way to get my hands on the last book.
Conn is a street smart thief from Wellmet's downtrodden Twilight district. He knows he's lucky. The Underlord may have put a word out on him and he might be poor as dirt, but he isn't dead yet, or crippled, or sick. And he has Quick Hands. So when a well dressed man walks close by, he reaches into his purse and grabs a whole mess of trouble, because the man is a wizard, and stealing from a wizard isn't something anyone wants to do unless they also want to die...
The first thing I want to say about The Magic Thief actually has nothing directly to do with the text at all. After so many books with stock image covers and photomanipulations, it leaves me with a big fat warm fuzzy feeling to see a good illustrated cover again!
That being said, what I found inside didn't excite me too much. There were so many areas of the world I wanted to explore that weren't in the book, and I kept getting bored with the parts I did get to see. Everything felt a bit colorless and I got more of a feel for the world from the illustrations and the cover of the books than I got from the text itself. Some of you may know how truly terrible my visual comprehension is, and those few of you know exactly how much that means. The characters all seamed wooden and one dimensional to me, which was expecially bad, because the book was in first person. Rivalries, friendships, and dialogue were all really forced.
Most of all, Conn's life on the street just didn't strike me as risky enough. Writing that feels really stupid, because Prineas gave us readers a whole slew of reasons why his street life was deeply dangerous from what happened to his mother, to that the Underlord wanted to do to him, but there was no feeling of urgency or fear, and Conn treated getting off the streets as some sort of adventure as opposed to a ticket out of the gutter.
That being said, there were plenty of things I did like about the book. I managed to, by implication, get something of a feel for the politics of Wellmet, and I'm such a sucker for that. The first chapter when Conn steals Nevery's Locus had such a delightfully creepy feel, and the Academicos had the proper air of pompousness. I also like the way magic is a sentient living being, fully capable of articulating its desires, and also capable of dying.
Likewise, I love Nevery's confusion as to what to do with Conn and his frustration when Conn can't be like the other much better educated, much more privileged wizards' apprentices.
When Conn needs to find a new way to talk to the Magic, he takes on some of Nevery's bad habits and starts experimenting with Pyrotechnics. People are turning to stone, and Wellmet's Magic is under attack. But if he gets caught, he could be exiled, or worse...
Prineas did improve somewhat from the first book in book two, but many of the same flaws evident in book one remained or became even more pronounced. The characters remained flat, and Pettivox, a decent villain with a lovely motivation of greed who liked political maneuverings (did I mention I'm a sucker for political maneuverings?) was killed off in book one only to be replaced with Jaggus. From the cover illustration, I was fully prepared to like him as a villain, especially since I initially mistook his turban (or turbanesque hair, I'm not quite sure) for a powdered wig, which in a steampunk world would be awesomely retro and might have a cool backstory. Instead, however, Prineas gives us readers a king from a Middle Eastern stand in, manipulated and possibly possessed by an evil Magic, and who is weak willed, deceptive, oily diplomat. I can't even begin to catalog the problematic implications of that!
Also, a new thin began to bother me, that might have been in the first book but that I failed to notice. I can't tell exactly how old the characters are supposed to be. Now I know a staple of certain forms of childrens adventure novels is that the children have either lenient or easily escaped guardians (I remember in elementary school we used to brag to each other about what our parents let us do, and it wasn't until high school we started bragging about things our parents didn't let us do but we did anyway) and that it's a potent form of wish fulfillment, but if I'm reading our protagonist and Rowen correctly, they're between eight and ten, and no monarch who doesn't want to go to war or have their precious progeny taken hostage would send a kid that young as the leader of a diplomatic party to a likely hostile foreign ruler! I think even at ten I would have been thrown a bit at that. Conn's freedoms are much better explained. He has a somewhat ambivalent guardian.
I really liked Kerrn, though. A hardbitten guard lady with mixed feelings about the hero is a wonderful thing in any story. Likewise, in the illustrations, the Egyptian temple look to Jaggus' fortress was entirely too cool for words. Also, there is something deeply attractive about Conn messing with explosives in the beginning, little boys playing with fire comes to mind. Near the beginning, when Conn is worried about asking Rowen for what he sees as an exorbitant amount of money, but does anyway, only to be asked "Is that all?" says more about the kind of sheltered life Rowen has led compared to Conn than anything else in the book. Prineas has also tightened up her prose in the second book, and it was interesting to see that growth.
Now for a bit of analysis relating to both books, I spent a lot of my time reading (and this increased my enjoyment considerably) spotting Prineas' influences. She mentions in an interview that she likes Megan Whalen Turner's books, and the absorption is obvious. Not only is Conn a thief under the control of an older powerful man known for his wisdom, but he also has a shortened name when his full name will become an important plot point. Gen's full name is simply a court name that references his god and his status, whereas Conn's is a "true name" (Actually, what is up with the true names in these books anyway? It's not tied into the magic system or political system or world at all, and I suspect that unless it's resolved in the third book that they're there because Prineas liked them in myth and other fantasies and so co-opted them without a real place for them) that references his familial connection to the Underlord. Furthermore, Jaggus' fall to his death references countless childrens movies as a way to keep the hero's hands clean, and also references Gen and his god, where a thief's physical fall is seen as his god letting him go. Since Jaggus falls when the magic has no more use for him...
I also smell a bit of Tolkien and Dianna Wynne Jones in the story. Firstly, there are the runes. Their point other than an amusement for children (and adult) that way inclined who read the story, escapes me, but the use of such games is a simplified and less extreme form of Tolkien's language creation. There are also Jonesish plot elements to be found sprinkled throughout the books, especially in Prineas' way of throwing in twist after twist and then winding it all up in the last several hundred words.
You know, after writing all this, I feel like a horrible person, because I got one of the books free and signed. Oh dear.
All told, I think I will probably contrive a way to get my hands on the last book.
no subject
My eight-year-old son ADORES these books. He can't wait for the next one. I think they're admirably suited to the age group for which they're intended (and particularly good for young boys, who tend to be impatient with too much emphasis on character development and worldbuilding when they'd rather get straight to the plot), but I can understand why it might seem unsatisfying to some readers to have much of the world and magic system still unexplored.
I didn't mind that, though, because I really did like Conn (and the Conn-Nevery-Benet dynamic, as well as the eventual romantic potential of Conn/Rowan) very much. I thought it was interesting to see a first-person narrator who is almost completely withheld from the reader on an emotional level, and it struck me as a deliberate choice to have Conn not talk about his feelings, rather than a careless one.
None of which is meant to negate your perfectly reasonable and honest review! It's just that your comments got me thinking about my own reaction to reading MT 1 and 2, and how interesting and diverse reader expectations of and responses to (and, in the case of the characters' age, interpretations of) a book can be.
no subject
no subject
That part is quite true; Conn is improbably well-adjusted and confident for someone in his position. But then I felt much the same about Harry in the early Potter books. It's pretty much the done thing in middle grade fiction to keep the main character at least a bit insulated from or oblivious to the harshness of their existence; it's not until you get into YA that the characters really start to feel it.
Anyway, I have blathered long enough, but -- enjoy your thoughtful book reviews. (And I loved THE DEMON'S LEXICON, too.)
no subject
How could anyone not like The Demon's Lexicon? Say it with me, SQUEE!