Thursday, October 11, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan




Within the Sanctuary of Wing is the final novel in Marie Brennan's "Memoirs by Lady Trent" series, which began with "A Natural History of Dragons" and was nominated for Best Series at last year's Hugo Awards.  I enjoyed the first two novels of this series, really liked the third, and loved the fourth novel, so I was both looking forward to this novel and saddened to find out that no more books would be forthcoming.

Within the Sanctuary of Wings is more on par with the first two books of the series for me than books 3-4.  By which I mean it's a fun book with some really good moments, but never really reaches the highs of those middle books.  It's still a fun book featuring a fantastic main character on a journey to a foreign land (in a foreign world) for scientific discovery - looking for a new type of dragon once again.  It also wraps up the series very nicely in the end, and I definitely would still recommend this series to SF/F readers looking for a fun series with witty and enjoyable characters with a plot that isn't yet another "save the world" quest - rather a journey of scientific discovery.

Note: I read this book as per usual as an audiobook, and the reader is very good, so if you're looking for audiobooks to read, please give it a shot.  All five books are available as hoopla borrows if your library subscribes to Hoopla.


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
In the final volume of the memoirs of Isabella, Lady Trent, the world's most famous Dragon Naturalist:

A few years have passed since Isabella married Suhail, discovered The Watcher's Heart, and was given a peerage to become Lady Trent.  Suhail's studies of the Watcher's Heart and the Cataract Stone have given him a starting point for deciphering the Ancient Draconian language, a topic on which he has presented to the public to great enthusiasm.  Meanwhile Isabella has continued communicating with her friends and colleagues around the world to advance the field of the study of dragons, but has not made any new great discoveries since her discovery of developmental lability.

Isabella naturally is happy for her husband - their combined interests in scientific study is part of why she loves him, but she still pines to be part of the first woman allowed into Philosopher's Colloquium - and she knows nothing but a new major discovery will allow her to achieve that feat.

So when a foreigner comes to Isabella with the possibility of the discovery of the frozen corpse of a dragon of a type not known to the modern world - and potentially one bred by the Ancient Draconians themselves - Isabella knows she will not rest till she finds a way to study the corpse.  But the possible find lies behind enemy lines in a foreign nation that has thrown her out once before, and just getting to the potential corpse...if it exists...will be a major problem.  And when she gets there, she will find more than she could ever have imagined: within the Sanctuary of Wings.
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My review of Book 4 (In the Labyrinth of Drakes) of this series mentioned how that book varied a bit from the usual structure of the books in this series.  By contrast, Within the Sanctuary of Wings adheres a bit more tightly to the typical formula of these books:

Part 1: Our heroine begins at home in Scirland and begins to plan a dangerous expedition to a foreign land to learn more about a different type of dragon,
Parts 2-4: Her journey and time in the foreign land and her difficulties in doing so in studying those draconic species
Part 5: Her getting involved with a greater political conflict in the region with implications for the dragons there and her stumbling about and solving it in a crazy insane way.

Following this formula is not a negative really - again I liked books 1-3 for a reason!  Isabella, our heroine and narrator is wonderful both as an older storyteller of her adventures described here and as a great character in general and its very easy to sympathize with her plights and desires.  And through the first four books, she has built up a wonderful supporting cast - Tom Wilker, her companion Dragon Naturalist; Suhail, her archaeologist/linguist husband; her younger brother Andrew; and her son Jake - which helps make the dialogue a joy.  And there are of course new characters, to speak specifically of which would be a spoiler here.

That said, while the plot of this book is generally very good and interesting - and certainly different from anything Isabella has done before - and it wraps up the series excellently, it results in Isabella separated from her companions for a good half of the book (She thinks they're dead, they think she's dead - it's not a spoiler since the book is written by Isabella years later and refers to her companions in the present tense that they all wind up making it out alive).  And while the new characters are certainly interesting, as are the dragons Isabella winds up finding, the result is that some of the more amusing interactions we get from Isabella's interactions with them is lacking for most of this book.  The last book was the one that wrapped up Isabella's love story with Suhail, which was absolutely wonderful, and this book doesn't really have anything as special to replace it when her companions are separated from her.

Again, this book is still very enjoyable and it wraps up the hanging plot threads of this series quite well, with everything nicely coming together into a nice conclusion.  I'm thrilled to have discovered this series after it was nominated for the Hugo, and glad to recommend it to anyone else.  If I had to rank the books, I'd rank them:
#1: In the Labyrinth of Drakes (Book 4)
#2: Voyage of the Basilisk (Book 3)
#3: A Natural History of Dragons (Book 1)
#4: Within the Sanctuary of Wings (Book 5)
#5: The Tropic of Serpents (Book 2)
But really, they're all very fun excellent and light fantasy fare, which is something I definitely could use more often with all the darker books I read.
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