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The King Of The Crags (2010)

by Stephen Deas(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0575083778 (ISBN13: 9780575083776)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Gollancz

series

The Memory of Flames

review 1: Second book in the Memory and Flames series. Stephen Deas still plays to his strengths, that is a jet setting story burning on rocket fuel with multiple POVs, bloody battles fought in the air, some bits of magic thrown in for good measure, not a lot of world building but enough hints to visualize a fantastic one, and giant fire breathing mad dragons hurtling through the air and slamming into each other, searing up everything around them.A good book that is again a breathless frenetic read. Deas has obviously sacrificed some quality for the sake of scorching pace that he sets up again. Book Two is even faster than Book One. Frankly in terms of plot, not too much really happens. Book One had all the set pieces being arrayed in place and now all of it comes to play. An all-ou... moret dragon-war in the realms of the dragon lords. A few new characters are in - though they seem wish-wash pale compared to the strong ones from Book One. Jehal and quite a few of my favorites still rule the roost, though again the first few pages, till Part-One, about 18% of the book, reads like some new story and a little insipid one at that. Jehal still retains that grey cloak and we truly dont know his motives. I know I might get lynched for saying this, but for some reason, he reminded me of Tyrion Lannister from the Song of Ice and FIre series. ( yeah go ahead, hit me!)From part-two, we're transported back into the scheming ruthless world of the kings and queens now scurrying to get support for the war that is imminent. It takes off on wings from this part on and the whirlwind pace is sure to suck you in with the fates of these power mongers. Sadly for me, Snow White the rogue dragon who was quite the star in Book One, really didn't have much to do in this book except for hunt and kill cattle for food and survive. Hopefully she comes back in Book three ?The final few chapters of the book where war breaks out, Stephen Deas really applies himself into the glorious details. A dragon-war fought in the air with your fire breathing monsters shrieking and slamming into each other nicely sketched out, the feeling was as if I was right there harnessed to the rider's saddle on top of the beasts - definitely un-put-downable. Overall I am a little disenchanted with the series but hopefully book three will put things back on track. Will pick it up a while later. Jehal and his scheming lover girl, Zafir can wait.
review 2: The second book of a trilogy is always intriguing. Will there be a change of tempo or a new direction, or will it simply carry on from the first book? In this case, the answer is - both. The prologue overlaps directly with the last section of book one, and is perhaps the second best opening I've ever encountered after 'Tigana', although - obviously - for very different reasons. It's funny and tragic at once, it summarises some of the story so far while also capturing the essence of the characters involved. I won't spoil the surprise by saying any more, but it is brilliantly funny, in a macabre sort of way.And then it's straight into new characters, new directions, a new religion even, and the fallout from book one, and - hmm, suddenly it's all a bit dull. Whenever the dragons are around, it's terrific, but I'm just not that into the humans. Trouble is, they're either very mad or very shallow, and all of them are slightly flat, and when it's just the same old deviousness as in book one, it feels a bit repetitious. The fast pace of the first book is much more uneven here, so that there are moments of breathtaking action interspersed with long passages of quite dull description ('To the north, he could see... And to the east...'). Yawn. Especially when a lot of it seemed to contradict the map (and I don't think I had the map upside down). And quite a lot of the backstory came out by means of one character explaining it at length to another, or, worse, soliloquising (or, as often seemed to happen, talking to himself in a dream - lots of dreams in this series). It's not that it was uninteresting, in fact some of it was fascinating (the bits about dragons - the family history was just laundry lists of names), but it did slow the action down. And sometimes in the middle of a solemn bit, there was a laugh out loud moment, or some really black humour, which felt a bit jarring, somehow.But there are glimmerings of depth to some of the characters - Jaslyn, for instance, and (can it be possible?) Jehal. And Meteroa intrigues me. But the Nightwatchman needs to get a grip on himself - he takes the moral high ground at every step, and claims he only follows orders, when he seems to be as devious as anyone else. I'm not quite sure what he's trying to do, actually, or why, or whether his hypocrisy is no more than a convenient plot device. And speaking of which, there wouldn't be much of a story without a great deal of stupidity on Zafir's part. In the first book, her motives were very plain. Not commendable, but understandable. But this time round, it's not clear to me that she's driven by anything more than irrational jealousy, which, given the likely outcome of her little schemes, boils down to plain stupidity. It is always difficult for an author to dream up convincing motivation, especially when the character is hellbent on war and general mayhem and a lot of slaughtering of royalty, but I don't really get what Zafir is up to, frankly. Or maybe it's all that inbreeding, and she's just barking, who knows. Insanity is another big feature of the series.But whether because of Zafir or the dragons or (maybe) just because the author felt like it, a lot of characters die in this book, some of them quite abruptly. This is a technique which has its attractions - there's a certain exhilaration, I suppose, to bumping off main characters or having them horribly maimed, and the likes of George R R Martin have used it with abandon. But there is a downside. For the reader, it can have a disconnecting effect - why get invested in a character when her or she is quite likely to be dragon food a few chapters further on? Once or twice has shock value, but the more this happens, the greater the desensitising effect. I would have thought that authors actually want readers to care about the characters, and this is not the way to do it.But there again, there's actually no one here who has a half-way decent impulse in them. All the main characters are devious, scheming, selfish bastards and it's tempting to say that, actually, they deserve everything they get. Even the dragon feels obliged to point this out. So yes, maybe dragon food is all they deserve to be. The ending is a veritable orgy of double crossing, so it's very hard to work out who (if anyone) is winning. And by this time, I'm not at all sure I much care. Let's hope the final volume hits the high spots again. Three stars. less

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