The First Betrayal

Overall score:

Josan is a monk living in the remote islands as a lighthouse keeper. He was sent there five year previous after barely surviving a life-threatening fever that stole his memories. His rehabilitation has been slow, but successful, and he’s ready to return to the city where he can continue his scholarly studies. Unfortunately, one night he’s attacked by an assassin—and lives—and begins to suspect that the conflicting memories in his head hint at a past life he’s not only forgotten, but had wanted to leave behind.

Ysobel is the young trade liaison between her own country, Seddon, the masters of the sea, and Ikaria where she must make new contacts for profit and diplomacy. Only, her motives are beyond the beneficial trading between the two countries, for what could provide better profit and stability to her own country than to stir up the rumblings of a rebellion that had been quashed five years previous?

The story sets up nicely, the characters promising and interesting as Bray establishes past events and motives. The pace moves along quickly, the narrative smooth.

And then everything just kind of washes out into blah.

Don’t get me wrong, Bray is clearly an intelligent person, she uses big words and has some strengths (plot, pacing), but unfortunately, they aren’t enough to carry the story.

Her characters start off interesting enough, but as you continue into the story they don’t change much, and they do contradictory things, leaving me incredulous at all their actions. By three-quarters of the way through the book I just didn’t care. At all. Bray tries to make them sound sophisticated with her semi-formal prose, but they just come off sounding silly—her dialogue is dull and witless. Her prose is awkward to read, and rife with cliché.

And, boy, is there blather. There is action enough to move the story forward, and a little dialogue here and there, but mostly the characters do a lot of internal thinking. I mean, a lot. So much that they get repetitive and annoying, and their thoughts contradicted their actions enough times that it really got on my nerves. I would skip paragraphs at a time, and I don’t think I missed anything. The climax was not built up very well so when it happened I was thinking, “That’s it? Huh? So what?”

The magic system was nonexistent. It was a crutch used to have a story in the first place, it’s not explained, and barely mentioned. Makes it less of a fantasy book than a story about queens and kingdoms on a planet not much different than ours. The setting is basic. Bray hardly talks about the envrionment and city that is the setting of her book. You don't get a feel for the place or its culture beyond simplistic comments.

At the end of the book there’s the first chapter of the second book in The Chronicles of Josan trilogy…and I didn’t bother to read the chapter, even though it was right there and handy--and I'm the type to read cereal boxes.

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Written by Nessa on August 10th, 2008