Review: Hour of Need

Hour of Need by Michael Pryor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is almost what that the whole series should have been, and had the potential to be.

I say "almost" because it's still full of the same copy editing issues (though fewer of them than some of the other books), and still relies on coincidence to enable the plot at key moments, and the magic system is still "whatever the author needs at the time". But it's a gripping adventure story for all that, moving smoothly and rapidly from one well-depicted set piece to the next.

The tsundere Caroline is a good deal more dere without being any less tsun, since there's finally been progress in the romance subplot beyond "Aubrey moons over Caroline, admires every single thing she does". He's in for a tough time in that relationship, but a) he needs it and b) it'll be worth it for him.

(view spoiler)[I did find the cessation of Not World War I through a bit of sensible action by people of goodwill a bit challenging to the suspension of disbelief, because the author had made a point of how the political situation had been trending that way for a long time and a network of complicated alliances had made the war all but inevitable, even though the actual war itself was manipulated by the villain. But it would have been a downer ending if the heroes had defeated the villain and the war had just continued. (hide spoiler)]

My summary of the whole series is: It had potential to be excellent, but didn't fulfill that potential because the experienced author has not learned some basics of language mechanics that he ought to have learned, and the traditional publisher has not corrected many of the errors he makes; because the author is much too prone to use fortunate coincidence to get his characters together in the place where the plot is going to happen; because the worldbuilding approach is "it's almost exactly Edwardian Europe with a couple of minor changes, plus magic, but everything is given a different name to make it seem more different"; because, despite the series title, the "laws" of magic are never really laid down in a Sandersonian way, so that the reader understands what they can and can't do, and they are often just pulled out of the author's back pocket (or a location quite close to there) and used to do whatever the plot calls for; and because the romance subplot makes almost no progress until the last volume. Some of the middle books (2, 4 and 5) are particularly weak. At its best, it's a rip-roaring adventure with appealing characters and spectacular set-pieces, but even at its best it's dragged down by its weaknesses. Average rating: Bronze tier, and lucky to get it, but it was compelling enough that I finished the series. I'm glad I got it from the library, though, because the whole series on Amazon would cost nearly $60 USD, and it's not worth anything close to that amount, given the unprofessional editing and general slapdashery.

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