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The Night Of The Swarm (2012)

by Robert V.S. Redick(Favorite Author)

3.85 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0575097787 (ISBN13: 9780575097780)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Gollancz

series

The Chathrand Voyage

review 1: Reading the third installment of this series, The River of Shadows, I was blissfully ignorant that there was a fourth book- so it was a nice surprise at the end to discover that there was. And the surprises keep coming for in book four- many bringing the plot up a level and increasing the dangers for the characters. As with the other books in the series the Chathrand, a huge ship brought to life by the author, makes for an amazing and fun setting.The style of writing has a certain flair that fits the story and the characters very well. Redick tells a good story and tells it well and kept me caring about the wide cast of characters- everyone from a tarboy to a talking rat.The story moves along for the most part at a fast pace. There are a few places where the characters... more talk things through with quite a bit of explanation that slows it down. While it lacks the same sense of adventure and mystery of the first three books, there is no lack of action as the plot threads come to fruition and conclusion. The ending is bittersweet and perfectly fitting to this wonderful series.
review 2: And we are done. The final book of the Chathrand Voyages tetralogy is over and I am left with a bittersweet taste, as befits the ending. Mr. Redick is a ruthless narrator, perhaps too much so. Not because he is not afraid to kill important characters, but because he often does not feel the need to close the circle of their personal stories and give us readers a sense of closure. Whether this works is a matter of taste. It is not fully satisfactory, but perhaps it gives us a sense of realism not often found in epic fantasy, a feeling that life just goes on, that we often don't get neat endings and not all is perfect even after a big threat has been defeated. Soon new ones will appear, although perhaps they will be for different heroes to fight.Coming back to this story, I feel bad to only give four stars out of five to a tale so ambitious, with so many strong points and things to commend. However, I have the feeling that it might have been even better. When you see so much inspiration and potential for greatness you also become more demanding. Let's see. Never since The Lord of the Rings have I seen a fantasy world with such a feeling of depth as Alifros. The richness of the setting is incredible. It feels fresh and new, always with new wonders to surprise us and captivate our imagination. At the same time, the character work is excellent. All of them feel like real people, complex, with virtues and flaws that only make it easier to care for them. The cast is large, not so much for the total number of characters but for the number of fully-drawn characters. Perhaps that becomes a problem. So much attention is paid to the background and stories of each character that sometimes we are in danger of losing focus on the story being told here. When authors get asked for a new tale set in their more famous fictional world, often they write a story fleshing out one of the side characters. In this series, those stories are already included in the books. Again, it's a matter of opinion. For some it will be awesome. Others might have preferred a tighter narrative. I was somewhere in the middle. I loved all those background stories (they are good!) and I cared about the characters, but at the same time I felt a certain sense of detachment from the main storyline. When an important antagonist was defeated it sometimes felt underwhelming, like an afterthought.I have just finished reading the story and I miss it. It's a feeling I have with the really great epic fantasies. I feel that this will be one of the rare series that I read again. I'm surprised that it is not talked about much more often. Read it! It's not perfect, but it has a lot of personality and you will find things here that other epic fantasy stories won't be able to give you. I'd like to express my admiration for the author and hope that he will keep writing and giving us stories as memorable as this one. less

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