Jeremiah Tolbert

Full dis­claimer:  Ken is a great guy, some­one I con­sider a won­der­ful friend.  One of my regrets about not liv­ing in Portland (despite hav­ing wanted to for about 8 years) is that I don’t get to hang out with him and his wife more often.  Ken’s suc­cess is well-​​earned.  We first met at a Norwescon a few years ago, and Ken was just get­ting started again seri­ously with his writ­ing.  He’d sold a few sto­ries, not many.  We hit it off and I asked him to send along some­thing to the Fortean Bureau, which he did, and we bought it.  And a cou­ple of oth­ers.  I loved Ken’s short sto­ries.  I sup­pose that is to tem­per my com­ments com­ing next.

I enjoyed Lamentation.  However, for me at least, it suf­fers from over­hype.  It’s a good book, but so much energy was poured into call­ing it a great book that  I had unre­al­is­ti­cally high expec­ta­tions.  I don’t mean to damn it with faint praise, and I’ve thought long and hard about whether I wanted to admit that I didn’t froth over the book, because I want noth­ing more than to see Ken suc­ceed.  So lis­ten, I did like the book. I do rec­om­mend that you read it.  You are liable to love it.

Anyway–It’s very inter­est­ing on sev­eral lev­els to me.  Ken’s very good at what he does, so let me expound on how and why.

One aspect that I really like is that it’s a breezy kind of epic fic­tion.  I read the book in 2 days.  I rarely get to cut through a book that fast (although this is the first book that I’ve read since being laid off).  The book rarely dragged which is rare for this kind of fan­tasy for me.

A lot has been said about the world build­ing, which I started out dis­lik­ing and slowly grew to find more inter­est­ing over time.  It felt at first to me that not enough logic and fore­thought went into the com­bi­na­tion of echos of our world’s cul­ture.  As the book devel­ops, I see that more is going on, and I became more inter­est­ing.  I really liked how the his­tory of what had hap­pened echoed through the events of the book.   I think Ken han­dles this excel­lently.  World build­ing can eas­ily bog down this kind of fan­tasy.  Look at Tolkien, who I con­sider an inter­minable bore when it came to all his descrip­tions of land­scapes and Elvish his­tory and singing.  Ken fleshes out his world, but does it deftly, much like every­thing else he does in the book.

I do think the book suf­fers a lit­tle from too many points of view.  I found the con­cept of many of the char­ac­ters inter­est­ing, but their insights rarely struck home with me.  I spent much of the book wait­ing for a char­ac­ter who would sink his teeth into me like Tyrion from Martin’s books.  However–Martin’s books are like 5 times longer and I don’t think this is a mat­ter of skill so much as it is a mat­ter of time.  Ken’s got 4 more books to do this, and I’m def­i­nitely going to give him a chance to develop these char­ac­ters even further.

Okay, I’m enter­ing into spoil­ers ter­ri­tory next.  Behind the cut.

One thing bugs me, and that is that I never really felt like the main cast of char­ac­ters were at risk.   They suf­fer some emo­tional dam­age, and I think maybe a cou­ple of minor wounds here or there, but I never got hte impres­sion that these char­ac­ters lives were at risk.  Some may like that, but I felt that it really sapped the dra­matic ten­sion for me.   Maybe Ken will prove me wrong and mur­der Rudolfo in his sleep in Book 2, I dunno.  But I kept wait­ing for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, and it never did.  I don’t know.  Maybe this is a case of “too much George R.R. Martin.”

I did feel that the char­ac­ters had detailed emo­tional lives, and I really liked what was going on with Tam and Rudolfo’s his­tory, the his­toric manip­u­la­tion.  I never felt that the char­ac­ters didn’t have inner lives, which was pretty impres­sive.  That said, I did find that Rudolfo became a bit of a cypher.  He was a hard man to read, both for myself and I think for the char­ac­ters around him.  I hope we dig fur­ther into his psy­che in future books in particular.

I like where this book leaves off.  I’m very intrigued by this moon that sounds an awful lot like a hab­it­able world.  I won­der who this evil force is out­side the Named Lands, and I’m very inter­ested to see the world grow beyond the Named Lands.  What else is out there, I won­der?  I do look for­ward to find­ing out.

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