Having read and enjoyed The Wind Singer, Your Humble Blogger picked up the second book in William Nicholson’s Wind on Fire trilogy, Slaves of the Mastery. Sadly, I put off writing a book report about it until finding at the library, checking out, and reading the third book. So my impressions of the second one are now muddled with the third. This also violates my general rule of not reading a bunch of books by a single author in a short time, particularly not reading all three of a trilogy one right after the other. At least on the first time through, when re-reading a trilogy it’s just as well to read them together, although it’s still a bad idea to lug around a giant omnibus edition, particularly while using public transportation.
Anyway, the second book was very enjoyable, I think slightly better overall than the first. One problem of the first book was that the ending didn’t quite work. Not that the plot was bad, but there was no new twist at the end; having returned from their quest, the protagonist and his companions have to outrun the Danger to save their home, and they do, and the book ends, and that’s it. This book has something of the same problem (having gained Strength and Training, the protagonist meets his enemy, and they fight, and he wins, and that’s pretty much it) but the pacing isn’t so abrupt, so it works better. There is a slightly wider range of interesting characters, too, which is nice. And, having already introduced us to the city of Manth in the first book, he demolishes it early in the second, and introduces us to an entirely new city in the second, still clearly in the same world but with an entirely different guiding force and customs. That keeps the second book in the series from losing my interest the way most second books do when I’ve really enjoyed being introduced to a new world in the first.
The action in this book takes place five years after the end of the last one, so the protagonist and his companions are a good bit older. On the whole, this doesn’t make so much difference in their character as you might think. It allows for plot differences, as concerns in the first about childhood friendships are replaced by concerns about marriage and love. And, of course, as a fiend for narrative, it didn’t bother me that the characters weren’t childlike as children, and aren’t like teenagers now, as long as they have things they want and actions to take to try to get them.
I was a trifle annoyed by the ideology apparent at the end of the book. I’ll ruminate more about the ideology of the trilogy when I report on Firesong, but in this book, there’s an entire city of slaves, dominated by one superhuman will, which will is casually cruel but obsessed with beauty. Under its influence, the slaves create a town universally considered breathtaking, play marvelous music, sculpt and paint and landscape, and generally achieve at a tremendous level. When the Master is destroyed, the slaves are all set free, and in a paroxysm of liberation, burn down the town and destroy everything in it, killing a good many of each other in the process. It seemed ... odd. Not like real people. Or at least not like real people’s response to real slavery; this supernatural domination may have been intended to be sufficiently different to make this response different. My impression was that all the slaves reacted the same way, and that way was violent. But then, I suppose, he has to destroy the city to set up the next book.
The important thing, I suppose, is that Superhuman Will and the Slaves is a good name for a band.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.