Tuesday, March 31, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Balancing the Scales by Annie Bellet




Balancing the Scales is the long awaited tenth and final book in Annie Bellet's "Twenty-Sided Sorceress" urban fantasy series.  This is a series that I've greatly enjoyed, filled with short novels/novella-length stories of a geeky heroine and her geek friends trying to deal with powerful magical foes, from shapeshifters, to vampires, to an abusive evil sorcerer ex-boyfriend.  The Ninth Book in the series came out last January after a year and a half wait after book 8, and really spent a good portion of its pages setting up this book as the finale, leaving a lot of open plot threads.  So when this book finally was released the second week of March, I bought it quickly and tore through it that weekend.

Alas, Balancing the Scales is a bit of a disappointment, especially as the finale for this series.  Don't get me wrong, the story keeps going with its fun heroine and her geeky friends, and they have some strong moments in here for sure.  On the other hand, the book essentially doesn't resolve half of the series' open plot points, including one absolutely major one opened here, and isn't particularly satisfying in how it finishes off the plot arc that took center stage last book and has been looming for basically 9 books now.  If this was not the final book in the series, those issues would be easier to deal with, but it is, resulting in a book that can't help but disappoint rather than satisfy.


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
When Jade Crow defeated the illusionist sorcerer Ethan, who had been set upon her by the vampire Archivist, she thought she'd have a moment to rest before she had to deal with the other threats to her friends and family.

She was wrong.

Now, Jade finds herself held captive by an unknown woman who wants Samir's heart, with Samir's mind somehow taunting and influencing her in her own head, and Alek missing and possibly dead - with little memory of how things turned out this way.

And meanwhile, outside her prison, the First Shifter has finally made his move on the rest of Jade's friends, seeking domination of all Shifters for his own mysterious purposes.  And without Jade to help them, Harper, Ezee, Levi and the rest of the crew seemingly have no hope of survival.

To save all her lover and her friends, Jade will need to figure out what is happening, discover what's left of her power, and call upon some untrustworthy allies.  For her enemies have finally made their move, striking her from both within and without, and Jade's survival may throw the entire world off a knife's edge and into destruction.....
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Balancing the Scales pulls a trick and starts off from Harper's perspective rather than Jade's, allowing the book to essentially jump forward a little in time by the time it gets to Jade's story.  Longtime readers of the series know what has to be coming for Jade in this book: Jade will have to deal with the First, and very likely both the Archivist and what's left of Samir, who was obviously not quite done after his body was destroyed in book 7.   And well, Jade does sort of deal with all three of these things in a certain order, which is what you might expect.

What you might not expect is how in doing so, the book repeatedly punts on closing these threads at nearly every juncture.  Jade can't kill off Samir for good without possibly destroying the world and he's clearly planned some way to get at her after death?  Easily solved with the consequences never dealt with in this book at all.  The Archivist's sending multiple powerful beings and people after Jade to get at Samir's heart?  Yeah, Jade finds a way to stop him, but that leaves him still around and results in other possible consequences that the book never deals with.  With the exception of the plotline with the First, the book basically brings up repeatedly consequences of Jade's actions - some of which have been setup for multiple books now - and then lets her off the hook without an explanation, as if there was more story to tell later.  But there isn't! 

Spoilers in ROT13: Gb or zber fcrpvsvp va fcbvyref:  Va obbx 7, Wnqr jnf gbyq fur pbhyqa'g rng Fnzve'f urneg be vg jbhyq qrfgebl gur jbeyq.  Nf n erfhyg, Fnzve'f urneg rkvfgrq nf n gval qebc bs oybbq guerngravat gb cbffvoyl ertrarengr uvz nebhaq ure arpx sbe gur ynfg gjb obbxf.  Dhvpxyl va guvf obbx, fur'f erirnyrq gb unir rngra gur urneg va n qrfcrengr nggrzcg gb fnir Nyrx....naq gur jbeyq'f qrfgehpgvba arire bpphef ba cntr urer, jvgu rirelguvat fgvyy gur fnzr frrzvatyl.  Gur frevrf yvgrenyyl grnfrf guvf npg pnhfvat gur jbeyq'f qrfgehpgvba sbe 3 obbxf bayl sbe vg gb fueht naq ershfr gb qrny jvgu vg jura gur npg unccraf.  Yvxr Jung?!?

Fvzvyneyl, Wnqr fcraqf n fvqr dhrfg serrvat Yvyvgu, gur zbgure bs nyy Inzcverf, gb qrny jvgu gur Nepuvivfg, juvpu rirelbar jneaf znl unir qrnqyl pbafrdhraprf ab znggre ubj jryy Wnqr gevrq gb pbaqvgvba gur pbagenpg.  Ohg Yvyvgu qbrf abguvat bs hfr orpnhfr gur Nepuvivfg unf nyernql tvira njnl Nyrx va gur gvzr vg gnxrf gb trg ure, naq gur Nepuvivfg naq Yvyvgu ner whfg yrsg gb rkvg fgntr evtug fb Wnqr pna qrny jvgu bgure fghss, univat qbar abguvat ohg fgnyy guvatf ba gur cntr.  Jul qbrf guvf fvqr cybg rira rkvfg?  V qba'g xabj, ohg vg freirf ab checbfr urer.

Mind you, Balancing the Scales still maintains the series' fun geeky heart for much of its length, particularly in one mid-book side quest Jade and her allies undertake to get the power needed to handle their enemies - the DnD and other references fly off the page, and its as charming and as fun as ever.  And Jade's breakthrough is certainly a "F Yeah" moment to some extent.  So if this was just another book in the series, that'd be enough to make this a satisfying adventure, if an incomplete one.  But this is not just another book, it's meant to be the conclusion of the series.

And even the sole arc that's completed - the First's attack on Jade and her friends is really unsatisfying, with the First having no motivations for his actions and his need of Alek other than the idea that the First is mad and driven to his actions by interpretations of prophecies that may not even be correct.  We've heard about the First and the Council and things going wrong with them as far back as the second book in the series, and instead here he turns out to be a totally uninterested power mad villain doing things just because he thinks destiny says so, which is just utterly underwhelming.  At least the Archivist and Samir were interesting villains, with depth, but the First is totally not, and he's the antagonist the book decides to focus upon.

Basically all this book did was make me wish the series really had ended after the seventh book, when Samir was initially defeated.  Bellet is writing a new series in this world, featuring a side character, and I expect she'll deal with some of the consequences of this book there.  But that's not an excuse for leaving such consequences - consequences so large as "if you do this, you will destroy the world" - out of the series which has spent so long dealing with them.  Just a failure of an ending, 3 books after a novel that could easily have served as an ending instead.  What a disappointment.
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