Review: World's Edge: The Tethered Citadel Book 2

World's Edge: The Tethered Citadel Book 2 by David Hair
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I may just have been in the wrong mood for this, or it may just not be my kind of book. I'm not sure.

The first volume's big faults were worldbuilding lifted largely from real-world cultures (though with some alterations), and helping the plot along with several big coincidences at the end. I gave it a pass, and even four stars and a place in my Best of the Year list (though barely), because it was adventurous and exciting and everyone gets to make one or two mistakes. I noted, too, that the copy editing even in the pre-release copy I had from Netgalley was quite clean.

This one hasn't been as thoroughly copy edited prior to being sent out for review (I assume it will be before publication, though), revealing the author to be a sloppy typist with a habit of omitting or transposing words. Maybe that wore away at my enjoyment enough that I wasn't as gripped by the plot or charmed by the characters, who don't seem to get a lot more development than they'd had at the end of the previous book. To be fair, they were reasonably well developed at that point; I just felt that this was so much a plot-driven story that character development wasn't as much of a strength as in the first book.

There are certainly plenty of things going on, with multiple factions on each side of an armed stand-off, lots of treachery, and interludes that remind us that there's another worse threat on its way. War and treachery are not themes I generally seek out in my fiction, and that is probably another element of why I didn't like it much (which is about my personal taste, not the book's quality). There's also some gruesome torture, multiple graphic fights, and several threats of rape.

What pushed me over the edge into deciding that I wouldn't continue with the series, though, is another big coincidence near the end. Vaguely enough to avoid spoilers: there's something that's been going on for centuries, and it stops (by complete chance) in the same minute that some of the characters enter the scene. Great for cinematic drama; terrible for suspension of disbelief.

Also bad for my suspension of disbelief was the character armour/badass quotient of the main characters. Again, it's cinematic (though probably with an R rating for graphic violence).

So maybe part of the problem was that the tone was inconsistent. Sometimes grittily realistic (which I didn't personally enjoy), sometimes cinematic (which I found challenged credibility), sometimes a more standard epic fantasy feel lying between the two. The combination meant I could never really settle into the story, and overall I just didn't quite love it.

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