Monday, January 8, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Court of Fives by Kate Elliott



Kate Elliott is one of my favorite authors that I've discovered since I returned to reading the genre over the past 2 plus years - Through 2017, I'd read seven of her books, which made her my sixth most-read author (and on a per-page basis, I think she probably comes in 4th).  So Court of Fives, the beginning of a new trilogy by Elliott - her first Young Adult trilogy no less - has been on my "to-read" list since shortly after it was published in 2015.   Despite my not being anywhere near the target age group for YA material, I've found some pretty great reads in the YA SFF sub-genre ("In Other Lands" for example being one of my favorite books of last year), so I was interested to see what Elliott would do with it.

The end result isn't quite a total success - the book at times feels very much like Elliott is perhaps trying a bit too yard to be "YA" in tone and it suffers for it.  The book is the first in a trilogy (just completed last year) and while it starts off with undertones that make it feel maybe a bit like a Hunger Games rip-off, it does finish with an intriguing cliffhanger.  Still, if I wasn't a big fan of Elliott, I'm not sure I'd continue with the trilogy after finishing Court of Fives.


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
In a fantasy world, the Country of Efea is controlled by individuals originally from the land known as Saro.  The people born in Efea are considered commoners, while those from Saro are considered "Patron" born, an upper class.

Jessamy is one of four sisters, born to a commoner mother and a Patron father.  Her father is a esteemed military commander, held back by the weakness of his Patron Sponsor and his commitment to his commoner concubine (who he cannot marry due to class-rules).  But Jessamy dreams to run the "Fives," a competition that involves an obstacle course featuring five different types of obstacles that provides the main entertainment for the land.  While women are allowed to run the Fives, Jessamy can't do so openly without bringing shame upon her father, so she practices and enters a match in anonymity, only to be forced to throw the match to preserve her anonymity.

But when her father's sponsor "conveniently" falls dead, he is forced to go along with the plans of a plotting Noble and cast Jessamy and her family aside.  That Noble also takes Jessamy to a stable to learn the Fives, while her pregnant mother and siblings are taken away supposedly "for their own safety".  In the middle of this, Jessamy meets Kal, the Noble's nephew and a boy of royal blood, for whom she starts to share feelings.

But when it turns out that Jessamy's family is in far more peril than anyone realized, she is forced to risk everything in order to save them.  But can she trust Kal to help her?  And what of the strange man who constantly insults her and insists that everything she knows about the Country's history is wrong?  If she can't choose her path as quickly as she does on the Court of Fives, she might just lose everything....and everyone she cares about.
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Court of Fives is told entirely from the point of view of Jessamy, the story's protagonist, and as usual, her voice is definitely solid.  The secondary characters are also solidly developed for the most part - even the mysterious "Ro," who will no doubt feature more prominently in the sequel, is developed in a way that he seems more than just a cipher, but an understandable person in his actions (even if they're not all explained in this venture).  Elliott is very good at developing a set of characters who have believable actions and motivations, and that mostly shows here.

The worldbuilding is also mostly well done.  As I mentioned above the jump, it's hard not to feel like the book is aping other YA novels like The Hunger Games - it's a crapsack world for people who aren't in the upper class where a game performs the task of distracting some of the populace - but the book develops this world in the final half to differentiate itself.  The book ends on a cliffhanger, which normally isn't my jam, but it's a cliffhanger that is well earned and works naturally as an ending to this book.

That said, Jessamy is probably my least favorite Elliott major character.  While her voice is solid, at times it almost reads like Elliott is trying too hard to make her a typical YA protagonist, which is a shame (I don't know how to describe this any better).  And then I had a hard time believing Jessamy's actions/motivations given what was happening in the story - Jessamy feels a conflict throughout between her love of the Fives and her love of her family, a conflict that is only made greater when she is forcibly separated from her family by the antagonist but in doing so is given the chance to run the Fives that she always wanted.  That setup is fine....but in the final third, the threats to her family become so great that it feels incredibly weird for her to go back to caring the same about the Fives in the final few chapters.

As Jessamy's the star of the story, it's kind of a big deal for her actions/motivations to fail to be believable, which really hinders the story (to discuss more in detail will spoil, which I'm not going to do here).  If I didn't have faith in Elliott from her prior works, I'd probably not continue with the series.  But instead, I'll definitely check out Book 2 - hopefully it improves in this area.


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