There are some people, known as Travellers, who have the ability to leave their bodies and move in spirit to other dimensions. There are those, known as the Brethren or the Tabula who, for nefarious reasons of their own, hunt down and kill all Travellers. And there are those, known as Harlequins, who are sworn to protect the Travellers at all cost.
Two brothers, both Travellers, are separated. One is found by a Harlequin who takes him to a pathfinder, that is a kind of teacher who helps him develop his abilities. The other is captured by the Brethren, who have made contact with a civilisation in another dimension that want to come to ours, and want somebody to lead them between dimensions, so need a Traveller. And just in case the brother they have can’t do it they set out to kidnap the other brother.
Then follows the great search with the Brethren using all the modern surveillance techniques already placed in society and the Harlequin trying to keep the Traveller ‘off the grid’ and out of sight of the ‘great machine’. Naturally he is found and kidnapped. The Harlequin stages a rescue and the first book in this new trilogy ends with the brothers firmly established in opposite camps.
This is a difficult book to review since I’m really not sure whether I actually like it or not.
I’ve always had problems with mysterious groups who want to rule the world for no good reason. The Brethren are no exception. It is never satisfactorily explained why they’ve historically felt the need to kill all Travellers. Nor is it explained why Harlequins feel the need to protect Travellers up to an including the ultimate sacrifice. (But given that for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction the Harlequins probably must defend Travellers simply because the Brethren must kill them) For that matter it is not adequately explained exactly how the Travellers skills are threatening enough to warrant their deaths or worthy of defending to the death for either.
The characters, particularly the secondary characters, are flat. The main characters, while a little more rounded, still come off as stereotypes and clichés.
Many of the plot devices were completely unoriginal. The author trots out the old break-into-the-impenetrable-fortress-through-the-air-conditioning-ducts scenario, for example. I just rolled my eyes. When will the evil empire learn to hire the services of a surveyor to make sure that the impenetrable fortress is in fact impenetrable? Haven’t they ever seen any B grade action movies?
And the line between Good and Evil is unmistakably Black and White, there are no areas of grey in this novel. And there’s no prize for guessing where the story is going in the next two books. That civilisation from another dimension is unlikely to turn out to be bringers of peace and light to us here on earth.
The bulk of the book is less story telling and world building than it is a warning about the insidious monitoring of every aspect of our lives and the total lack of any real privacy in this post 9-11 paranoid computer monitored society.
But, and this is where my difficulties lie, for all of its faults the book was still a page-turning read. And I’m not sure why. The writing wasn’t of riveting quality, I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters and the plot was thin to the point of transparency in places. The ending was not at all satisfying seeing as how it was simply setting up the next novel in the trilogy. And don’t even get me started on the cliches. Yet I read it all and don’t regret the experience. As I said at the start - difficult.
Will I read the rest of the trilogy? Probably not, but then again, maybe.-Lynn
No comments:
Post a Comment