| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: Low Violence level: Medium (pretty brutal, but mostly off-screen) Back Cover: “As a child, Rook had been taken in by the bards of Luly, and raised as one of their own. Of his past he knew nothing—except faint memories of fire and death that he'd do anything to forget. But nightmares, and a new threat to the island that had become his own, would not let him escape the dread fate of his true family. Haunted by the music of the bards, he left the only home he knew to wander the land of the power-hungry basilisk who had destroyed his family. And perhaps, finally, to find a future in the fulfillment of his forgotten destiny...” |
So, the plot--the usurping tyrant and the hidden/lost rightful heir. There are a number of ways that can go, and you’ll probably be surprised by how it’s all resolved. This is one of those situations where the omniscient narrator tells you what the characters are doing, and some of what they’re thinking, but the true motives may or may not be apparent. I like that, personally. It’s nice every once in a while to have a character take me utterly by surprise--to be harboring a secret so deeply hidden that they don’t even give the narrator a hint of it beforehand, not even in their thoughts. It’s true, there is a little bit of foreshadowing for it, but nothing like as obvious as it might have been.
That unforeseen ending is one of my favorite aspects of this book. The plot itself is both simple and complex, in that our main character knows pretty much what he’s going to do from early on (once he remembers who he is, of course, which takes a good long while), but actually doing it involves a lot of twists and turns. Some of them are utterly necessary, and others are necessary only because he is who he is, and his personality requires it. (Also, the opera that accidentally mimics life--that was a nice touch.)
But I think my absolute favorite thing is the characters themselves. They’re all so unique and interesting, each caught up in his or her own story, sometimes noticing the stories of others and sometimes just completely clueless. And I find the main character’s relationship with his son deeply touching. (I’m not using his name because he changes it a couple of times through the course of the book.) That relationship is the most important thing in this story--the one thing that ends up as the deciding factor in the course of his life, and therefore the entire country. With neither one of them willing to abandon the other, in spite of the threat of torment and death...well, let’s just say it’s a very easy book to get lost in, and they’re very easy characters to want more of, and leave it at that.