Thursday, July 11, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Storyteller by Traci Chee




The Storyteller is the finale of Traci Chee's fantasy trilogy which began with The Reader (Review Here) and continued with The Speaker (Review Here).  This is a trilogy that is about a world that has forgotten literacy, and of forces who seek to use the power of literacy for their own - sometimes good and sometimes evil - powerful ends.  I enjoyed the first book in this trilogy but wished it did a lot more with the setup, but the second book - The Speaker - really had me enthralled.  And so, The Storyteller wasn't going to stay on my list of "to be read" books for long and I had high expectations.

Does the Storyteller meet those expectations?  Yes and No.  On one hand, it's a hell of a story, which often goes to some very very dark places, and it's riveting throughout.  It also takes a story that already was incredibly meta - I mean the first two books featured a "Book" which contained the stories of every character within - and makes it even more Meta, in ways that in a lesser writer's hand could break the immersion of the story.  And yet, it works, and works really well.  Still, I'm not sure I particularly liked the way it ended, even if the journey to get there is excellently done.

More after the Jump:

---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Sefia and Archer have a new goal: not only to stop the deadly plans of The Guard to unite the world with bloody war, but to break free from the destinies given them by The Book: the destinies that foretell that Archer will lead a great army to conquer the Five Islands and then die alone; the destinies that foretell Sefia becoming the most powerful force as a Reader the world had ever known....but would lose everything, including the boy she loved.  Together with Captain Reed, who is searching for the legendary Resurrection Amulet, they search for some way to escape such awful fates....and try as hard as they can to avoid looking at The Book for clues, knowing the Book itself would seek to manipulate them.

But Sefia can't help but want to look at The Book to stay one step ahead of her enemies, even as she knows it is selectively showing her things to further its own say as to her destiny.  And as The Guard begins to move the Red War to its conclusion, it becomes clear that neither Sefia and Archer, nor any of their allies - Captain Reed, the lost king Ed, or two wayward former soldiers - can justify to themselves the idea of merely trying to hide from it all.  But in the end, the destinies and fates of all may lie within the hands not of Sefia and Archer, no matter how powerful they become, but of the one telling the Story itself....
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This trilogy has always been one that is fairly Meta - after all, the main macguffin of the story is The Book, which contains the very story we are reading, and that the main character Sefia can browse with some limited decree of control.  But The Storyteller takes this up another level, with a character being introduced and affecting the story in ways that is just....something to behold, but impressively it works out really well.  I'm not going to say much more in and of itself so I don't spoil, but it's a pretty impressive achievement, and helps mold a theme of this series about who really tells one's story.

By this point in the trilogy mind you, the world has expanded to include lots and lots of characters.  Sefia and Archer remain our main characters, and they remain terrific as they attempt desperately to do good by the people they care about, while also desperately searching for a way to save each other.  I'm not going to be able to say more about either I haven't said in past reviews already and they remain terrific characters with excellent development throughout.  And so are the other characters here, from the Lonely King Eduoar (whose story it turns out is not over as I thought in the second book), to Captain Reed, or to Archer's bloodletters, or to a pair of goofball soldiers last seen in the first book.  Even the antagonists remain strong as their own characters.

The result is an epic fantasy conclusion, but first the book continues its own winding path through a fascinating plot that takes our heroes and villains in some totally interesting directions.  And of course there's the explosive finale, where our heroes are forced again into hard choices and everything ultimately comes together.  But again, it's the journey that makes this book so damn excellent, with everything coming together in ways that both surprise and make sense at the same time, complete with the Meta twist I mentioned above coming into play in a major way.  I should point out once again that this is an absolutely dark story, with the powers our heroes learn to use being horrifying in their power and scope - but it's one that never is dark for the sake of being dark, and is excellent as a result of it.

Still, while I loved the journey, I'm not particularly sure I love the ending.  Don't get me wrong - it works....it's just, tearjerking in a way I wasn't anticipating.  Not even going to bother with an ROT13 spoiler here, this is the end of the trilogy, and if you're going to read this book or this series you don't want this spoiled, but it's something.  I just wished for something different, although that's my fault and not the author's I guess.

Still, if you couldn't tell, I recommend The Storyteller for sure and this series in general for others to try.  It may take a little more than a book to get going, but in the end, this is an incredible if dark YA fantasy world with interesting themes and fascinating characters, who will make you care deeply for their fates.  Hard to ask for more.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)