2010 steampunk fantasy. Darian Frey is still just barely holding the
airship Ketty Jay and her crew of misfits together, and once more
he's going to get in way over his head.
It's been over a year since I read Retribution Falls, and I
think that's probably about the right mental distance… because this is
very much the same sort of story, complete with gradually increasing
emotional oscillations (mild despair, mild elation, major despair,
major elation, really amazingly terrible despair, etc.), and a heavy
emphasis on crew as family, who are the most important things to you
even if you don't always like them very much. It's feel-good reading
that tries to push all the emotional buttons even if it hasn't always
earned the right to do so.
There are betrayals and sudden appearances and gosh-wow moments, and
more seriously there's some development of the Manes, which in the
first book were mostly a zombie-style horde of inhuman killers. Frey
is still the author of at least half the things wrong in his life, but
he develops (to his own surprise, never mind the reader's) a
remarkable nobility, apparently as the result of trying to think about
what he actually wants from life. (If I have to read a mid-life crisis
book, let it at least be one with airships in it!)
Each of the other characters also gets some development, some rather
more than others; although it's still facile, I think this book
manages to move a little beyond the basic "this bad thing happened to
him so he's like this now" that was the main approach of the first
volume.
Things do move a bit slowly, particularly in the first half, but
overall this is a step up from the mind-candy of the first book.
Followed by The Iron Jackal.
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