Friday, October 12, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Ships of Air by Martha Wells




The Ships of Air is the second book in Martha Wells' Fall of Ile-Rien Trilogy (and the fourth in her greater Ile-Rien setting) and the follow up to her "The Wizard Hunters."  I really enjoyed The Wizard Hunters, so it didn't take long for me to jump into the sequel, which picks up right where the first novel left off.

And well, I was not disappointed one bit - The Ships of Air is probably the best of the trilogy, and is maybe the best of Well's Ile-Rien universe.  Our fantastic characters from The Wizard Hunters return and are further developed, and just are amazing to follow (and sometimes hilarious) and the plot twists and turns and excites constantly.

Note: Do not start this trilogy here, you will be lost and miss some of the great relationship-building done in the first book.  Start with The Wizard Hunters.  

More after the Jump:

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
With the Gardier base on the Isle of Storms destroyed and the Country of Ile-Rien now overrun by the Gardier, Tremaine Valiarde finds herself aboard the Queen Ravenna, a cruise liner repurposed as a refugee ship and sent through the world-gate spell to the parallel world belong to the Syprians in order to bring its passengers to a safer city in the world of Ile-Rien.  Together with her are her Ile-Rien allies - Florian and Gerard - and a contingent of Syprians, including Ilias and Gilead, but also including members who wish to destroy the Syprian/Ile-Rien alliance.  And then there's the psychopathic Syprian Wizard Ixion, who seemingly can't be killed and is clearly planning some evil scheme from his captivity.

But the voyage of the Ravenna will not be easy - Gardier airships lurk in this world, and the world's geography is unknown and mythlike at times, making the journey perilous on its own.  And the Gardier seem to have some sort of agent onboard, with some ill intent toward the Ravenna or its passengers.  If Tremaine and crew are not careful, the Ravenna won't make it near its final destination.

And when their journey runs into another Gardier base, Tremaine and her friends will find out more about the mysteries of the Gardier as they scramble for safety.  And when all is said and done, does Tremaine really have what it takes to lead everyone or will she get everyone killed?
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I'm describing The Ships of Air's plot poorly, because I want to write more than "Our Heroes sail on a refugee ship through a parallel world and things happen" which sounds kind of blah - and this book is definitely not blah.  Again, so much of that is our main character: Tremaine Valiarde.  Tremaine is a fantastic heroine, again incredibly capable but full of self-doubt, but extremely willing to take incredible, dangerous actions when the situation calls for it - in addition to being incredibly snarky and hilariously witty in her dialogue (both internal and external).  She's not quite her father (The Death of the Necromancer's Nicholas Valiarde) in her ruthlessness, but she can be quite close at times, and it works really well.

She works especially well in combination with Ilias, our 2nd protagonist.  It should surprise no reader of the first book that a kind of romance springs up between the two, but of course with Tremaine being a frazzled, impulsive woman with a ruthlessly pragmatic streak and Ilias being an extremely attentive (if not to some social cues) pragmatic (to some extent) man with a strong desire for belonging.  Ilias is a fantastic complement to Tremaine, able to match her for wit at times, and able to see who Tremaine really is better sometimes than Tremaine does herself.

The rest of the cast works great as well - Florian sort of functions as a tertiary protagonist, especially when she is separated from the rest of the main cast and is extremely different still - much more naive and innocent but her earnest want to contribute and use her abilities for good is a big contrast.  Gerard remains a bit snarky as the elder of the main cast (he very much reminds me in this book and the next of Stone, from Wells' Books of the Raksura), Giliad remains kind of snarky and practical as the God's Chosen Vessel and his internal conflict is a major part of this book that works quite well.  And then the new characters from Cineth are an interesting contrast to Gilead and Ilias, who are firmly on the side of the heroes.   Not to mention one new character who would be a spoiler to reveal anything about, who changes things up quite a bit.

The result is a plot that sounds kind of blah when I describe it, but is constantly thrilling and kept me wanting more.  If there's a weak point in the novel it's that when our main cast is separated from the side characters, resulting in a side plot from Florian's point of view, the Florian plot isn't quite as interesting and every time we return to it, I kind of wanted it to get over with so we could get back to our main cast.  The payoff of this sideplot works, but it's a slight pacing problem.

Otherwise, I continue to recommend all of Martha Wells' work, and The Ships of Air is just another example of that.
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