The Rook, au service surnaturel de sa majesté

I really thought I'd enjoy this. I wanted to like this. I didn't :(

This book features one of the most intriguing opening scenes I've read lately, and it sets the tone for a mysterious dark tale (which is fantastic). Then the entire thing turns into a humorously absurd tale which obviously isn't meant to be taken seriously (which is also fine, I guess, just not the kind of book I prefer reading). The narrative stays uneven, as if the book just can't decide what sort of book it wants to be. Scenes begin with a sober tone only to melt into a pile of giggles. This might appeal to many readers, but unfortunately I'm not one of them.

And the cleverness, oh god, the cleverness. See, this book is imaginative. And clever. Oh so very clever. It's so in love with its own cleverness that it becomes tiresome very, very fast. Everyone's constantly delivering snarky one-liners, everything is either a pun or a juvenile joke, and there's no real way to differentiate the characters because they're all just, well, so damn witty and snarky they basically sound the same.

All in all, this was an overwritten book with a cool premise, some nice ideas and a very tedious execution. I thought I'd give it just one star, but it gets a surprise extra star for the stroke of genius that is the Gestalt siblings.

I was happily listening to the audiobook and enjoying it reasonably until I made the horrible mistake of reading the goodreads description and noticing the ugly jumble of letters that is “Myfanwy”. You might think I could just select to ignore this and continue on listening to the audiobook, never again needing to see this abominable combination of letters again but I can not lie to myself. Never again will I return to my blissful ignorant days of thinking the main character was called Miffany.

(also it was kinda boring I should mention that too)

I simply cannot express how much I loved this book.

After a slightly rocky beginning, O'Malley takes you on a fast paced ride that won't make you put the book down until you've finished it.

I can't wait to see what he writes next!

This was a really good book.

This year I took a concerted effort to read more books from series. A lot of what I tend to read are one-off books and I want to explore more series, especially longer ones. The Rook was a recommendation by a friend and seemed perfect for this effort, being one of 3 in a series, and something a little less popular than some long standing series that I've also been afraid to approach.

Right from the outset the book is intriguing. Waking up with amnesia surrounded by assumed assailants, and then entering the strange sci-fi James Bond-esque world the main character's previous self was a part of is compelling. I really enjoyed the drip feed of information about the world of espionage she's been dropped in and the ways the author separated out the two identities of the main character to take us through learning about things ourselves. I also thoroughly enjoyed following her piece together the strange world and try to discover an insidious plot from within. It was a thoroughly enjoyable story that was a bit like reading an action movie, and that was a lot of fun. However, I did feel like there was quite a lot going on at points, dealing with many villainous parties that I wasn't sure connected and by the end of the story really didn't feel super relevant. It felt like plot padding, and because it lacked presence in the greater story I did feel myself losing attention at times on these B-plot adventures that were gone off several times. Despite this, I'd gladly read more into this world as I found it a fun romp way more often than not.

I listened to the audiobook of this and I also must call particular attention to the voice actress who did a fantastic job at voicing some of the different European dialects, particularly some of the villains.

Didn't like it as much the second time around. The main character was a bit annoying; at one point she herself says admits she acts like a twit a lot of the time, and I agreed. The story and premise are still really interesting.

I listened to the audio version this time, and have mixed thoughts on the narrator. She was good at the voices and accents, but everything she read that wasn't dialogue was done in the exact same cadence. I noticed it pretty early on and it was very distracting. It was so bad that by the time I got to the halfway point that cadence started to bleed into the way I was reading the print book I was reading at the time.

Disappointed I didn't care for this as much as I remembered; still don't plan to read the sequel. But there was enough about it I enjoyed that I'm glad I went back to it all the same.

Really good story. I didn't see how some of the incidents were involved and thought they were useless. But in the end I did.

Rating: 3.25 stars.
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Should have been called “Exposition Dump: The Novel.”

This is one of those books that had a stellar premise but was unfortunately marred by subpar execution.

A woman, Myfawny, wakes up in a park with absolutely no memory of who she is and is only guided by letters written by herself from before she was saddled with her amnesia. As it turns out, she's a person of significant supernatural ability in a secret organization whose job is to protect the world from supernatural phenomena while also keeping them secret from the general populous. The basis of this premise has been used many times before, but it's an appealing facet of worldbuilding that's led to many successful and endearing properties before.

The main issue is that this kind of setup requires a lot of knowledge to be passed onto the reader so that they know what's going on. And this leads to now of the trickiest parts of writing...exposition. Sometimes, the only way to give readers the knowledge they need about the world in your story is just through telling them in prose. And if it's written in a genuinely engaging way, I usually don't mind. In fact, I think learning about an interesting world can be fun.

In this book, it is not fun. Much of the exposition we are given through Myfawny's letters from before she got amnesia. It's a very cool setup that's dampened by the fact that these letters go on for pages. They make up entire chapters in some cases. The letters that detail was Myfawny was doing before she got amnesia and are tied to the plot are kind of interesting, at least. But half of them are just info-drops on certain individuals, about the Chequey organization, things like that that aren't connected to the plot. It brings the story to a grinding, uninteresting halt. And it's a shame because I already think the book has pacing issues, where it feels like the plot plods along in the early-mid section of the book before suddenly ramping up around the 60% mark, and then slowing down in favor of a subplot of introducing another character to Myfawny before ramping up once more around the 80% mark.

It also doesn't help that Myfawny in general is one of those clever and snarky protagonists. She always quipping about things, likes to make nonchalant comments in tense situations, and has skewed priorities (asking for coffee during important operations). These kinds of characters, I find, are very hard to write well. I've only seen them pulled off a handful of times. Most of the time, they're just incredibly annoying and also hurt the atmosphere in a book. How am I supposed to take anything seriously in this book when the character doesn't themselves? How am I supposed to find weight in anything that happens in the story when the character is treating it like a big inconvenience?

It's really too bad because there are some really cool concepts in here. Some of the characters, like Gestalt, were a fascinating character concept that I thought was interesting to see fleshed out. The main villains of the book (no spoilers) had some great, visceral descriptions going for them. Ingrid was cool. Alrich was also kind of cool. There was one part in the book that got a genuine chuckle out of me and I thought was kind of legitimately clever and not the artificial cleverness the book tries to make us think (won't put details because of spoilers).The last part of the book where the plot ramps up did kind of have me hooked and I read through it pretty fast.

This book has a sequel, which makes sense considering how the book ended. Too bad I'm not interested in continuing.

highly enjoyable, but somehow uneven and a little rough around the edges, like a cake baked by a teenager

Just a great fun read that I whizzed through. A secret semi-supernatural spy agency, an amnesiac paper-shuffler turned superhero, weird mutanated allies and foes - what's not to like? And despite being a re-read it hadn't lost it's moments of suspense and surprise.
Nice to read a female protagonist written by a man that isn't a super-sexy one-dimensional fantasy and actually appears to be quite realistic and believable (in an albiet bizarre parallel version of our world).
I had only one gripe, and it's a petty little thing that nags at my teeth again and again when reading fiction set in the UK and written from the point of view of an English person.... American spelling!! Taylor would use those superfluous Us, double consonants and Ss instead of Zs (that's “zeds”

DNF na 36% (t.e.m. HS15)
Ik wou dit boek echt goed vinden, maar kon me er niet door worstelen.

Het idee is nochtans super intrigerend, speciaal en origineel. Het maakte me echt curieus om meer te leren, maar tegelijkertijd vond ik de manier van schrijven zo info-dumpy dat ik iedere keer weer uit het verhaal werd getrokken.

Het was uiteindelijk omdat ik merkte dat ik telkens met tegenzin het boek oppakte, dat ik besloot om niet meer verder te lezen. Misschien dat ik deze ooit nog een tweede kans geef, maar voor nu geef ik het op.

Started out well enough, a lost memory story. I rarely find these, as well known of a trope it might be. The writing is good, the protagonist witty, intelligent, likeable. But after the introduction the pacing becomes too slow. It feels like a 24 episode season TV series, where most episodes are just filler. Some of the “episodes” in the book are too boring and some even annoying.

Up to the moment there is a mystery regarding who the traitor is it was a good story. But then we are presented with:
- a needless action scene
- a straightforward sequence of events, kind of like the author is describing in details the steps to tying your shoe
- a caricature villain, “oh look at me, I'm so evil”
- the politically correct main character engaging in torture, in one of the most repeated tropes of torture/interrogation in writing history:

“Tell me what I want or we will torture you, even though I think torture is abominable”
“Do your worst, I don't care”
Oh, I think he is pretty though, I'll have to be creative
“Oh really? Then I'll do this to you!”
“Wait what? No no, please no! Okay, I'll talk!”

PLOT

Decided to reread this - it looks like part 3 is coming out this autumn.

This had a fascinating premise and structure, and I liked the characters.

Honestly, I was really excited about this. I've been meaning to read it for a while. The start of the story was interesting tho weirdly and clearly written by a man.  Like this women just woke up with zero memories and clearly in distress and the first moment she looks at her self and goes “hell yes I am thin” ... Like wtf. I could name more things but to be honest I spend more time trying to ignore them than document them. 

Then we have the main body of the story.  First off there was an awful lot of unnessicary nudity. Tho I loved how the narrative kept switching from current events to letters written by the former Myfanwy Thomas. However, they are supposed to be two totally different people, which is really only clear on one important aspect, being timid vs being assertive, and not anything else was shown clearly different. Which is kinda dumb since her whole personality was supposedly erased, there should be many things different. Which also highlight how incredibly one dimensional her entire character is. 

The villain where also, frankly, kind of dumb. Like Belgiums that were all kinda gross and have the most unbelievable motivations. (The supposed accents in the audiobook were really bad and not Dutch or Belgium and more an off-brand German but that is beside the point)  Another totally unnecessary edition of having Gestalt have the ultimate incest with themselves. (As well as calling Gestalt an it and not just they which seems like a weird and unnecessary choice but also beside the point) 

And the final reveal. Which was the most unrewarding and anticlimactic situation I think I have ever read if it were not for the book I had recently finished before this (The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle). The character who ends up being behind the whole thing  // spoilers ahead // is not at all a prominent part of the story and I honestly forgot he even existed.  The reveal and subsequent explanation was a bit convoluted and uninteresting, especially because many details were suddenly revealed that were never mentioned before and thus completely impossible for me to be able to deduce it on my own. 

All in all a disappointment and yet another example of why I should start reading more books written by women. 

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R36Q83O8D4CWBJ?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

If you like Charles Stross' The Laundry series you will like Daniel O'Malley's Checquy novels.

Stross's series has moved from Secret History to Alt-Hist. In Stross's series, the Laundry is a supersecret British spy department that scoops up people who stumble onto the mathematical nature of magic. The problem is that as computing power has increased exponentially, so has the ability to manifest higher powers, including Old Gods from the Cthulhuian Mythos. Stross is long on a humorous mix of spy tropes and Lovecraft.

O'Malley's creation fits nicely in this framework. Myfwanwy (rhymes with “Tiffany”) Thomas works for the Checquy, which is a supersecret British intelligence organization that scoops up people born with super-powers. Although the O'Malley seems to think that the super-powers are supernatural, in fact they appear to be completely random mutations, such as regeneration, flying, the ability to control other people's nervous systems, etc.. So, rather than British IT nerds, as in Stross, we get problematic loners with mutations being reared to fight other problematic loners with mutations.

Myfwanwy is the focal point of the story. She wakes up with total amnesia, but her prior identity has left her helpful notes to orient her to her life. As a consequence, we get a deep immersion in the weird world of the Checquy where she is a “Rook,” sort of the head of domestic operations for the Checquy, which operates on a strict Chess-themed hierarchy with a Lord and a Lady, bishops, chevaliars, rooks and pawns.

This is a funny, fun and engaging story. I listened to this as an audiobook and I found myself laughing at some of the dialogue. I was also thoroughly engaged in the story, wanting to see where it would go from chapter to chapter.

This novel is only vaguely like the recent television mini-series. While the books Mwfwanwy grows as a character; the TV version remains fairly mousy and restrained. The TV Mwfwanwy seems a bit of a hose-monster, whereas the novel's version stays away from human contact. The TV version has replaced and moved around characters for no apparent reason and made the story topically about “human trafficking.”

On the whole, the book is far better than the show.

I recomment this book thoroughly.

Lots of humor (I actually laughed out loud many times, which is rare for me) and I even understood some of the cultural references. A story with a strong female lead, which is nice; good action around the middle of the book all the way to the end. There were a couple times when the switch from one story line to the other didn't quite work in the audio but things sorted out pretty quickly.

The narrator has a very wide vocal range; getting really convincing deep male voices as well as a fairly high lead female.

The plot and premise were entertaining, but the author's inability to write believable women characters and the lack of diversity in a cast of characters that are supposedly pulled from all reaches of the former British Empire make this is an uncompelling and frustrating read at times. There's better stuff out there

This was a fun story, the audiobook was well narrated, and I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

I don't remember when I had so much fun with reading a book.

So, I was in a bookstore in San Francisco and Abby really wanted to recommend a book to me, but nothing really sounded good. I bought the Rook more out of a sense of wanting to buy a book in that particular moment rather than any hope that this specific book would speak to me. And then, it happened to be in my backpack when I found myself caught on a bus without the book I was reading. I got to “The body you're wearing used to be mine” and found myself completely unable to put the book down for the next 450+ pages.

This is really true perfection: a spy novel-y romp of deception and double-crossing, with some lovely world building (on the heavy side of expository, but well-explained by the protagonist's amnesia) and a female character that's nuanced and has agency and kicks butt and takes names. The sort of book that's like a warm cup of spicy cinnamon tea in my hierarchy of comfort.

I also had many lovely existential conversations prompted by the Rook: Is present Myfanwy the same as past Myfanwy? Just without trauma? Is she a totally new person? What does identity mean, anyway?

I'm so in for the series, but I think the framing device of amnesia really made this book shine, not sure how it'll keep up in the future.

This is a book with a lot of good ideas, written badly. I'm not sure if that makes it a good book, a bad book, or somewhere in between.

The opening is almost a cliche: woman wakes up with amnesia and is in danger. Several other elements are well-worn tropes as well. People with assorted superpowers! Secret elite school for those people! Hell, the X-Men alone tick both of those boxes.

So, the good ideas. For starters, clichés don't mean a book can't be fun, and everything has been done before. The specific situations are interesting and novel. I am really not selling this well. I really did enjoy the read.

What I didn't like is the writing. Not that the author can't turn a phrase. But I have some specific complaints. One of them is that there are plot inconsistencies. Another is how the author writes about women. He just can't help but remark on the attractiveness of female characters (sometimes male characters, too, actually), the size of their breasts, and so on. It's jarring, and it just seems so juvenile. Maybe the biggest problem is the hamhanded exposition. A truly incredible amount of information is conveyed to the protagonist, and therefore to the reader, by way of letters from her pre-amnesia self. It's just a bit hacky. And the letters are weirdly novelesque. Not at all the style you'd expect from the situation.

At some point I think I mentally modified my expectations to be less in line with... whatever I was expecting? Literature? and more in line with the standards of urban fantasy, which regrettably never seem to be as high. By those standards it's pretty good. I am not sure why I expected more from it. I guess it's because an awful lot of people spoke very highly of it, including the friend who recommended it, whose taste is normally impeccable.

This is a book that I enjoyed and am just a tiny bit embarrassed to admit I enjoyed. It's a fun read. Just temper your expectations.

There is a LOT of infodumping in this book, but the dynamics of the Checquy and Myfanwy's notes from her pre-memory loss self are so intriguing that it makes you want to continue reading even through the long passages of descriptions and dialogue.

This tale takes place in a modern world, like our own but where the Supernatural is real. It is a fun story with a bit of mystery, a bit of the super spy, some humor, and a bit of fantasy. In my opinion, the male author does a pretty good job of writing from a female perspective (although, I'm not qualified to make that assessment). I do have a few criticisms, however. The author frequently interjects letters as flashbacks, but I can't imagine how the main character could always be reading the right letter at just the right time - and most of the time, the main character couldn't be reading at all when the flashback is thrown into the story. The various supernatural capabilities and gifted individuals are imaginative, but give the world a chaotic appearance. The reader can't guess what weird capability will be introduced next because there seem to be no rules and no framework for how the supernatural exists.

From the back cover description:

Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a London park surrounded by dead bodies. With her memory gone, her only hope of survival is to trust the instructions left in her pocket by her former self. She quickly learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in a secret agency that protects the world from supernatural threats. But there is a mole inside the organization and this person wants her dead.

As Myfanwy battles to save herself, she encounters a person with four bodies, a woman who can enter her dreams, children transformed into deadly fighters, and an unimaginably vast conspiracy. Suspenseful and hilarious, The Rook is an outrageously inventive debut for readers who like their espionage with a dollop of purple slime.

I was deeply entertained and had my attention.