Tuesday, September 4, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan




Voyage of the Basilisk is the third volume in Marie Brennan's Hugo Nominated "Memoirs of Lady Trent," a series following her Dragon naturalist Isabella as she goes around the world trying to scientifically research different species of dragons (and promptly gets into crazier and crazier messes in the process).   I enjoyed the first two volumes (which you can find reviewed Here and Here) a good bit, so I expect to get my way through the entire series by the end of the year.  As for this volume, it's again pretty good and fun.

You should know the drill by now - Older Isabella narrates with wry asides her going on a journey to a part of the world to study dragons, has to ingratiate herself to the locals (and fails quite a bit at first) before achieving that in part, and then gets herself involved in a greater conflict through sheer happenstance/recklessness.  Voyage introduces a few new elements - traveling along with Isabella is her son Jake who is a nice new character and Isabella isn't visiting just one location, but is trying to travel around the world.  It also incorporates some of the series' larger plot arcs more smoothly within the narrative, whereas the prior volume had stuck the most major of those elements in the first few chapters, so this book moves along more quickly at a better pace.  The result is probably my favorite in the series, and I look more forward to seeing how these events play out in the final two books:

Note: I've been reading this series largely in audiobook format (though I read part of this in text) and the audiobook reader is very good.  So the format is recommended.  


 ---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
6 Years has passed since Isabella's journey to Eriga and her study of the Moulish Swamp-Wyrms, and during those 6 years, she has planned her journey - along with Thomas Wilker of course - to travel all around the world and study dragons and other semi-draconic creatures in order to form a more cohesive theory of dragon taxonomy.  And with her child Jake no longer a baby but now a bright young boy, she plans to take him with her on her journey.  And so begins the Voyage of the Basilisk, a ship whereby she hopes to travel around the world to conduct her studies.

But such a journey could be treacherous for anyone, but Isabella has never had the best luck of such things - not that her own curiosity and reckless nature hasn't helped with that.  On this journey she will meet new allies....and meet the products of old enemies come to roost with the product of her greatest secret.  And along the way Isabella will discover not just more about the draconic species, but of the dangerous waters the powers of the world are heading into....
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Voyage of the Basilisk promises to be a more expansive volume of this series than its predecessors, and it really is.  We travel around the world with Isabella and the crew of the Basilisk and the dragons encountered are of a decently larger variety than in the prior books (Book 1 essentially dealt with 1 type of dragon, Book 2 dealt with two types, this book deals with a bunch more). And we see more of the world and various cultures, as well as more interesting people than in older books.

The new characters here are rather excellent by the way.  Archaeologist Suhail is a fascinating new character and allows the story to build upon the puzzles of the ruins found in the prior volumes in a way that starts to be really interesting, and promises to be more interesting in the future.  Isabella's son Jacob/Jake is also essentially a new character, and its fun to see how her child resembles her in his freespiritedness but in a very different area of interest.  And Captain Aekinitos is similarly great as the practical but a little bit crazy captain of the Basilisk.  And there are of course the other individuals they encounter along the way (I'm not going to spoil where that is).

As I put forth before the jump, the book better integrates the other of the series' major long-term plot arcs - the dangers presented by the discovery of the way to preserve dragon bone - into the plot so that it all flows at a much quicker pace and works to make a more cohesive story than the last volume.  This plot arc is far from finished, but it is more interesting when integrated with Isabella's adventures as opposed to taking place on the side.

The book isn't perfect - the story's treatment of a trans/non-binary character is questionable I guess - in that the book treats it as a culture quirk of a less civilized people.  Still, the same allows Isabella to kind of question her own gender, although it still doesn't treat it as seriously as one might hope.  It's not an appalling treatment, I just don't think it quite works.

Still, this is another satisfying volume and I will start book 4 I suspect sometime next month.  I look forward to going forward and completing this series soon.
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