Monday, July 22, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Red Waters Rising by Laura Anne Gilman




Red Waters Rising is the third book in Laura Anne Gilman's "The Devil's West" series* which now contains 3 novels, a novella (which follows this book), and a bunch of short stories.  I have mixed feelings about this series - the first book in it, Silver on the Road, is one of the first books I read back when I started to get back into reading 3 years ago, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  But the second book in the series, The Cold Eye, was a major disappointment to me, which soured me a bit on the series.  And for whatever reason (sales, I guess), this third book wasn't available at any library I had access to (even on inter-library loan), so I was unable to see if the series turned around until my library purchased the book recently.

*I recall from a while back that this was not intended to be a trilogy, but reading somewhere that sales had forced Gilman to end the series with this book.  So I'm not calling this the conclusion or the series a trilogy in this review, even though there doesn't appear to be any plans for new works in this universe as far as I can tell.

And well, while the setting remains fantastic, the main duo of characters remain interesting, and Red Waters Rising containing a setup for a plot that could go in interesting directions....this book is more like its predecessor than the first novel - in other words, a bit of a disappointment, particularly in its ending....which just happens without warning.  Again, I like so much about this world, which is a weird west fantasy circa 1800 in which The Devil has been keeping the US and other foreign powers out of the Louisiana Territory, which features not only human settlers (both of Native and not Native varieties) but also Magicians, Demons, and more dangerous beings.  But this book just expands the world only to do nothing with it, making it hard to recommend any reader go beyond the first book in the series.


--------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Isobel nee Lacoyo Tavora of Flood, has come a long way since making her Bargain with the Devil to become his Left Hand, the Cold Eye, and the Final Word in the Territory.  Once a naive girl as to what went on beyond the Devil's hometown, she has come to understand the Road, and through the guidance of her mentor Gabriel has come into contact with both the internal dangers of the territory - Mad Magicians, Demons, Living Silver, etc. - and the dangers from those without - the forces of Spain and America who would do anything to gain a foothold inside the territory.  In the process, however, Isobel has come to resent and regret what she has been forced to do with the Devil's power...as well as the fact that people respect not Isobel herself, but only the Devil's power she channels.

Yet for all Isobel has seen, the one thing she has never faced is the nature of an actual city, and as she and Gabriel head towards the southern end of the Territory, they find the city of Red Stick on the Mississippi river.  But Isobel has no time to be overwhelmed by the great mass of people in the city, as both she and Gabriel can feel the stirring of trouble underfoot, and both the Natives and the Settler citizens are on edge, though no one can put a finger on why.  To solve the mystery and to assert her power, Isobel will need to find the truth about who she really is and what power she really wants to be in the territory.....but for once, Gabriel may be of little help, as he has his own problems to deal with, due to the powerful influence of the Mississippi...
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Red Waters Rising continues to follow the two main characters we met in Silver on the Road: Isobel, the Devil's Left Hand, and Gabriel, the part-Native man of the Road with a connection to the water and a past and tie to the land he wishes he could escape.  The story is probably 60/40 told from Isobel's point of view to Gabriel's, but both are essentially co-protagonists...although this is still really Isobel's story at heart.

And Isobel remains an excellent character.  She has grown quite a bit from the Naive girl she was at the start of this trilogy, but she's still unsure of herself for logical reasons, and her experiences have only taught her more reasons for doubt: particularly her doubting herself when she knows people respect her only for her connection to the Devil, and her doubting herself for now realizing how much the Boss didn't actually tell her before setting her out.  She's afraid of inaction, wanting to push forward and to do something to try to help, but is still uncertain of what to do and thus will sometimes take rash actions that could get her more in trouble as her powers don't work as she always expects.  It works really well as the foundation for this trilogy.  Gabriel isn't quite as strong a character unfortunately as our co-protagonist: the series has tried for some reason to keep his connections to the river and how he's tied to the territory somewhat obscure and it just gets frustrating as he's repeatedly referencing them and being affected by them in this book again and again without resolution.

The rest of the characters, as well as the setting, still work very well.  Again, this is a Weird West book and it's done really well, with Magicians being an ever present threat, with Natives still having their land under the Devil's Agreement unlike in our world but still having conflicts with the settlers that Isobel must try to resolve, with outside powers trying to find a way in to make a grab at the territory.  And then there are new supernatural developments the book introduces, that all work really well to make this setting even more intriguing and interesting.  It's an intriguing setup for the story that offers fertile ground for an interesting plot.....

But the problem with Red Waters Rising is basically that for all of the setup that is done, for all the character work that goes into further developing Isobel and her growth - and to a lesser extent Gabriel - the book fails to do much with it, and just.....ends suddenly with basically no explanation.  One of the absolute worst responses I can have to an ebook is to go from the last page of the story to the acknowledgements and feel utterly confused because my book has to be missing the last 50 pages of the story....and yet that's the reaction I had to Red Water Rising, an utter disbelief that the story could in any way end there, with the entire conflict left unfinished and with one character going away in a direction that is never explained and seemingly was left to a sequel novella.

Now mind you, I have in the past enjoyed books that decided to shift focus away from the general plot conflict in the setting, leaving such major conflicts unresolved in order to instead focus upon internal character conflicts and developments - for example, this is why I enjoyed Nnedi Okorafor's Binti: The Night Masquerade.  But Red Waters Rising doesn't really accomplish that either if that's what it was trying to do - while Isobel learns more of who she is through this book, there really isn't any particular special growth, she goes from being completely unsure to having some idea of what to do, doing that thing once, and then the book ends with the situation not at all resolved in any fashion.  There's no triumphant - or even tragic or otherwise - end result of her growth here - like the unresolved plot conflicts, it just feels like everything was just cut short for no reason.

I might still recommend Silver on the Road at this point to a new reader - I liked that book and it worked on its own.  But this book and The Cold Eye just do not work, and I can't recommend the greater series at this time.  Which makes me sad, sigh.
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