Night Angel Nemesis

3 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
Kylar and crew settled the risk of several wars by awakening old, powerful magic and building a new city to boot. However, it looks like that magic has had several dangerous, and unexpected consequences.

Review
The key against overwhelming odds, Kylar tells us several times, is to attack is to attack viciously, aggressively, and quickly, so that foes are afraid, uncertain, and overwhelmed. That's pretty much the approach Weeks takes with this book – it's constant action and drama, so that we're always running to catch up, and often unsure of what's happening, and who's supposed to be betraying whom this time. It's a very self-aware book, so I don't doubt this was a conscious choice by Weeks, just as it's a (long) story of a heist – which Weeks carefully defines for us as requiring a witness who misunderstands what's happening – whose witness is us.

I very much liked the original trilogy, despite a weaker-than-hoped ending, and was happy to see more of the world coming our way. Unfortunately, this wasn't what I hoped for. In fact, there were any number of places where I think Weeks went wrong.

1. - It's a near-immediate continuation of the first series. Despite having just reread all of that thick trilogy in preparation, this wasn't what I wanted. I wanted more discovery about the backstory, the ka'kari, the magic, etc. Instead, it's a direct follow-on at exactly the same scale – day-to-day, not great epic.



2. - Weeks doubles down on nearly everything:
   
   
   
   
   1. – length – where each previous book was 600 pages, this was 900. It didn't need to be, and would have been better at half the size (or less)
   
   
   
   2. – drama – where Kylar was put through the wringer several times in the first trilogy, now it happens every several chapters, and there are 108 chapters. Weeks knows exactly what he's doing – there are constant asides about whether it's too much, too over the top. Yes, it is.
   
   
   
   3. – breasts – we saw a lot of breasts in the last books. Well, Kylar was adolescent, inexperienced. It was a debut series. Now, both Kylar and Weeks are older. But they still haven't lost their prurient fascinations with breasts; Kylar even talks about it directly. It got old in the last series. Now, it's old and tired.



3. - The framing for the story didn't really work for me. It's all in the form of a not very credible journal Kylar records, using magic that suddenly exists for the purpose. There's quite a bit of other magic that is new, very convenient, and not very credible, including a key quest object.



4. - The villain of the piece is not only highly powerful, but appears from nowhere. This appears to be a feature, not a bug, but it's a pretty large stumbling block that the book stubs its toe on repeatedly.



5. - The climax of the book is a highly non-credible decision by our hero.



6. - Mostly, though, there's too much going on, too much too fast, and too many turnarounds, even in a book this size.

very

someone

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.