Araby has managed to escape the city with her friends,
giving her chance to absorb some terrible truths:
Her father is a murderer, her father created the plagues.
She can barely accept it, even reading his own journal and needs to hear it from his own mouth. Which means returning to the city – to hear from him and to find a cure for April as well, rapidly succumbing to the Weeping Sickness.
And while they’re there it may be their last chance to
save the city – a city ravaged by plagues, swamps and the duelling forces of
Prospero and Malcontent.
Elliot launches on a really excellent campaign this book.
It’s his chance to take back the city and save it from the dual abuses of
Malcontent and Prospero – his father and his uncle. He has his army, but will
it be enough against Prospero’s and Malcontent’s own forces? Or the city
itself? Ravaged by 2 horrendous plagues, the water unsafe to drink, the air
unsafe to breathe. Slowly sinking into the swamp, ravaged by divisive factions,
falling apart through anger and fear. Services have stopped, getting food into
the city is becoming harder and roads are blocked by the piles of bodies.
It’s an epic task he has – but he has a plan, reclaiming
a neighbourhood and expanding, creating a safe space, disposing of the bodies.
He is the man to save the city and he is perfectly placed to do so.
And he’s not the protagonist.
We’re following Araby. Awwww… do I have to? But but
Elliot is the hero!
In the face of these epic happenings Araby is… spending
pages on pages worrying if she really loves Elliot. Or wondering if she loves
Will after his betrayal – and his continuing activities for that matter. Or she
is worried/hurt about her father and the terrible revelations that show that he
is far from the hero she suspected. Or she is worried about April or the
children or some of her other companions.
And it’s not like any of these issues are wrong. She has been betrayed by Will, her whole relationship with Elliot is a complicated one. And April is her often unappreciated best friend who is now plague ridden – of course she is worried about her and the children in such dangerous places and circumstances. All of her emotions are legitimate. But they’re also repetitive, really really, repetitive and handled at great length. I could, possibly, get past that if we didn’t have Elliot running around actually doing something – and not just doing something, but doing something for the whole city that makes Araby look very… small in comparison.
Sometimes I like her checks on Elliot, her reminding of
him of all people, her compassion breaks through his ruthlessness and her
holding on to their group reminds us and Elliot of priorities beyond the city –
that there are actually people there, that the diseased are not the enemy, that
there are lines that cannot be crossed – and that April is sick and needs help.
Which would be great – if she were equally involved in
the big picture stuff as well. And if she didn’t devote so many thoughts to the
Elliot and Will love triangle with breaks for daddy issues. But because she’s,
at best, incidental in the main plot (she tags along with Elliot basically
pushing him to look for her father) it makes her look very small picture – and very
insular – in her views. If she had just been more active in the bigger picture
she would look more like the conscience check she needed to be.
About half way through she gets more involved – but it’s
almost incidental and poorly thought out. She rescues a load of orphans – but only
because she thought it was a great idea to head out with a small child and a
sick woman who is inclined to faint armed only with a small gun with 2 shots –
and luckily found only 1 guard. She gets involved in Prospero’s palace because
she’s kidnapped. She knows where the rings are because she’s kidnapped
(admittedly showing some sense in recognising her own expendability compared to
people actually doing stuff or capable of doing stuff to save the city).
And Propero’s palace? Kind of lost me, though I may have been zoning out. But it was a long line of look-how-evil-Prospero is (we know) and then she’s playing games with him and then everyone turns up in a slightly odd fashion (for a sealed palace he has really crappy security) and then his army just disappears because he starts cowering in a corner – and I’m not entirely sure how we all got from A to D, nor am I sure if B and C were involved anywhere in the journey but a lot of this was down to me being just a little fed up by this point in the book, if I’m honest
And the ending? Am I supposed to buy into this whole “Elliot
may become a tyrant!” thing? Because he is the beloved leader who just rescued
them all while Will pouted in a corner and Araby moped in the opposite corner
and incidentally did some good from sheer random chance as much as anything.
The whole election thing looks particularly dubious – Will insists they need
them to protect the people from their saviour (who he spent the entire book
pouting about) and schedules them for 2 weeks. Seriously – 2 weeks? A regular
food supply hasn’t even been established, you’re not even sure the plague is
gone and securing clean water is a must (oh hey, lookit the stuff Elliot is
doing!) but you want election campaigns? Uh-huh, guess who I’d vote for?
I don’t think the ending was best paced anyway, but it
could be my own evaporating patience. It ended – and then we had a couple of chapters
with Malcontent and the pump tapped on the end – I think they could have been
better saved for another book or just taken as done; there wasn’t enough there
for an actual story. And the story had ended anyway – we didn’t need some extra
crocodile wrestling when the ending had already been nicely set up.
In terms of marginalised issues – well we have zero
minorities again and this with a pretty large cast of characters. As for women –
April spends most of the time fainting and struggling and Araby has moments of
excellence but they are drown in moments of angst and issues while Elliot actually
gets on with things. She made decisions that didn’t make a lot of sense or,
when they did, either happened through pure chance or where brave decisions based
on her own utter expendibility. It was only really once she reached the palace
that we saw some decent drive from her. But a special shout out has to go to
Araby’s mother – kidnapped, a hostage with almost no power yet still fighting
as well as she can to the very best of her ability to save people and rescue
people.
We do touch on class in that the wealthy people are
seeking shelter from the carnage in the city, but it’s a lot less involved than
in the first book – especially since even the rich people running are jumping
from the frying pan and into the fire.
And am I supposed to be on Araby’s side over her father? Because I completely agree with Elliot. For that matter - I have no idea why Araby is so important? Why did Prospero even remotely care about her again? Enough to have a whole party for her?
In the end this is a great world and a great concept. The
theme of darkness, grittiness, loss and pain are really well maintained. The
horror of the plagues and the sheer desperation of the city really come through
and are hammered home. This is desperate, hopeless, horrifying and truly bleak
and that permeates a lot of the background.
Unfortunately the foreground is some very repetitive
angst, a lot of repetitive moping and a lot of repetitive boyfriend or daddy
issues. Which are repeated. At length. They actual story has to squeeze in between
this – and most of that is driven by another character entirely and one I’m
apparently supposed to view with suspicion. It drowns the good stuff and left
me eager to finish the book and be done with it.
