 |
The Science of Power | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Ru Emerson | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Night-Threads | The Calling of the Three, The Two in Hiding, One Land, One Duke, The Craft of Light, The Art of the Sword, The Science of Power | ||
The drug called zero is still entering Rhadaz, corrupting poor and noble alike and putting Duke Aletto into a zero-induced coma. Christopher, Jennifer, and Robyn Cray are pretty sure they know the parties responsible, now. Now it's a matter of bringing the guilty parties to justice - both foreigh and domestic - and stopping the drug trade before it destroys their adopted country.
In a way, it is unfortunate that the trilogy, and indeed the entire Night-Threads series, ends with this book, because I honestly found it rather dull. Oh, there were some bits that were exciting, such as Chris' capture by zero lords and his subsequent treatment, or Enardi's encounter in the Podhru marketplace. But the latter was short, and even the former wasn't all that long. Worse, the time it did consume was wasted. It progressed the plot not at all; we already knew this character was a villain, and no information slipped out that would let anyone prove it or otherwise take action.
And so most of the first two thirds of The Science of Power is some form of talking and planning. Planning how to gather enough evidence so that the aloof emperor would allow them to act against a favored childhood friend. How to survive a savage beatingmand hopefully escape afterwards. Pland for where to go next, and what to do. It's all important, but at its core its still all just talk, with very little action to hold the reader.
In that last third, though, I had some hope things would be different. The circumstances are suddenly drastically altered, and there is every indication events are speeding up. And in fact they do. But while Chris and Jennifer and others get the ball rolling, they are rarely present when it starts striking the pins. They get reports back on the results of what they set in motion, but they're not usually the ones to actually provide these results. And in the few instances where they are present, they are largely bystanders. A point of view, a shoulder for readers to watch over, and that is all. It makes the story a bit less than thrilling. In only one matter does a main character take a personal hand in bringing things about - and once again it does really take all that long, for all that it is a critical part of the climax. It helps, but not enough. The main characters should be in on all of it, or at least most of it; that's why they're the main characters, after all. If Emerson wanted to spread things out among more people, she should have let us look over their shoulders as well.
The author does do very well with her characters. They're all very human, with their own personalities. She evokes the proper attitudes in her readers as well; I truly wanted to befriend the good guys, and I really hoped the bad guys would get theirs. I was not, in ther words, ambivalent about their fates. And as a final touch, she even kills off a significant, important person working for on bringing the zero traffic to a halt. It's a fairly rare act, and most authors, when they do this, choose a victim who is fairly superfluous to the story in order to give the impression of major impact while have virtually none in reality. But that's not really the case here; this person still could have contributed to the plot. So when it happened I was taken quite off guard; I kept expecting to learn that they had only assumed this person had died. But, no; they're dead. Well done, that.
But, again, it's not enough. The story is readable, no doubt, and the characters are interesting enough that I never didn't want to read on. But at its heart, the main characters really do very little. A few individual bits of excitement can not really turn this into the type of plot that I enjoy. The kind where something happens, we see it happening, and the main characters aren't just responsible but actually doing it. That, this book is not.
| By Title | By Author | By Rank |