Sunday, September 3, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Blackthorne by Stina Leicht (The Malorum Gates #2)

Blackthorne is the sequel to Cold Iron, a "Flintlock" epic fantasy book written in 2015 that I liked a bit (My review on twitter can be found here).  By "Flintlock" Fantasy (the author's description, not moine), the author simply means that while this is clearly an epic fantasy story, and some characters do carry swords, combat is more often done with flintlock rifles and muskets - we're dealing with a 17th-18th century-esque fantasy world, not middle ages.

In Cold Iron, our main characters were Kainen, magical beings (think: Elves) facing, among other things, the threat of an invading empire of non-magical human beings.  All of our main characters had some magical abilities - Suvi had the magical ability to command others into doing what she wants, Ilta is a magical healer with scrying/future-seeing abilities, and Nels, while he mysteriously doesn't seem to have command magic, at the very least has the ability to see the lives of those who he kills with his sword (not exactly the most useful or desirable ability).

Blackthorne on the other hand introduces several new main point of view characters who are in fact Human, and lack magical abilities, and deals with several of the humans of the invading Empire. We learn more about that human empire and the demons - the Malorum of the series title - that are infesting it.  It's an expansion of the world of Cold Iron and for the most part it works - the new characters and world are interesting (even if none of it is original).  Unfortunately, the book too often feels like it's telling two different stories that aren't really connected to one another and the book doesn't succeed in wrapping everything up into a satisfying ending.

More after the jump, with minor plot spoilers for Cold Iron:

---------------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------
After the events of Cold Iron, the Kingdom of Eledore has fallen to the human Kingdom of Acrasia. However, the main characters of Cold Iron - Suvi, Nel, and Ilta - managed at the end of that novel to seal the demon gateway in Eledore such that the evil Malorum are still locked away from entering the Country.  Now, Suvi, Nel and Ilta lead the Eledore resistance, backed heavily by refugees from Acrasia itself, as they attempt to save their own nation.

But the threat of the Malorum is not over - in Acrasia, they are known to wander, having entered the world from an open gateway in the Country - and the world remains threatened.  And of course Acrasia isn't happy with even the remnant of Eledore still existing, being a country with a deep hatred for non-humans.

In this situation, several new plots emerge:
First, Suvi, Nel, and Ilta, as well as new POV character but old character Dylan, seek to try to restore Eledore as much as possible.  But to accomplish this goal, the crew will need to obtain a cache of special swords,which can kill the Malorum, from an Acrasian storehold, such that these weapons can be traded to the allied Waterborne clan to solidify the alliance.

Second, the same crew also learns from a Goddess who speaks to Dylan of another gate where the Malorum are entering the world and seek to seal that gate.  Unfortunately, that gate is on an island near Acrasia, and is in fact underwater....

Third, in Acrasia, Caius, a new Warden (the branch of Acrasian military/police that serves as assassins and hunters of non-humans, and Drake, a woman police chief who is part non-human, seek to discover why what seems like a rogue warden is hunting and killing people, only to find a conspiracy of people dealing with the Malorum.

Finally, in both places, a man now going by Blackthorne, a former warden distrusted by the Eledoreans for his past hunting non-humans, seeks to save other non-humans from the horrors of Acrasia, all the while fighting his past training and determining who he really is.  And his past might hold a connection with Caius and the case he is investigating....
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That's a long plot summary I know, but this is a long book and definitely epic fantasy.  We've gone from three point of view characters in the first book (Nel, Suvi, and Ilta) to Seven in this one (Nel, Suvi, Ilta, Caius, Drake, Blackthorne, and Dylan).  The strength of the first book was its first three characters, so its nice to see them again in this book (in addition to now having Dylan as a POV), and the newcoming POV characters are worthy additions.

The big problem is that the Caius/Drake plot arcs really feel separated from everything else in this book, and while they kind of come together with Blackthorne's POV by the end of this book, the book ends before the plot arcs can really intertwine and affect each other.  In essence, it's a slightly smaller version of the problem I had with another book - V.E. Schwab's A Gathering of Shadows - in that it's REALLY obvious from the very beginning that Caius and Blackthorne are on a collision course, and yet it basically doesn't happen in this book (the two physically meet but their major interactions are saved for another book).  The same is also true of Drake, who is an interesting character....but whose plotline winds up seemingly going nowhere - it impacts the other characters, but doesn't seem to add up to any conclusion whatsoever.

A smaller problem to me is that Nel/Suvi/Ilta/Dylan's plotlines to seal another malorum gate just feels disconnected from the rest of the book.  It's a good thing I really enjoy those characters thanks to Cold Iron, because it really feels like an afterthought compared to everything else.

That said, I don't want to be TOO negative.  This book isn't as frustrating as A Gathering of Shadows was (which I graded a 5.5 despite loving the characters) as this book does have a central plotline that does have SOME conclusion - in the plotline of the titular Blackthorne.  If there's a reason I tried to explain the plot so long above, it's because the plot summary on Amazon oddly doesn't mention the title character or his story at all, which is bizarre.  A large part of the plot is Blackthorne's struggle to discover who he is and who he wants to be as a non-human who previously trained as a retainer and as a hunter of other non-humans in this world that seemingly has rejected him and amongst allies who he previously fought and who detest him for it.  This plotline isn't fully resolved by the end at all (as I mentioned above), but Blackthorne's own journey of self-discovery IS resolved, which gives a little bit of closure.

Course, unlike A Gathering of Shadows, which had a concluding volume dated and finished by the time it was released, Blackthorne's eventual sequel remains unwritten at this point (and the author has said on twitter that she's working on something else for the moment).  So while I have enjoyed this series, you may want to hold off on reading it until you know for sure that the series will ever HAVE a conclusion.  Alas.
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