Dragonfly Falling

The pace accelerates in this book, while the duels and skirmishes from Empire of Black and Gold turn into pitched battles and sieges. The characters develop further as well, with Tynisa embracing her new heritage and Thalric struggling with his loyalty to the empire as he realises that he may be the only wasp who sees it as it is meant to be, rather than as a facade used to hide power plays.
The wasps besiege Sarn, while their Vekken allies attack Collegium, and the contrast with how the two cities respond is interesting, with the ants making everything as methodical as possible to extract the hgihest cost in blood from the wasps, while the fairly cosmopolitan beetles use their various mechanical contraptions to merely survive.
Totho gets an some much-needed character development, and his interactions with Drephos are some of the best parts of the book, as Drephos provides the only interesting villain aside from Thalric, albeit a fairly cliched one. But he is still well-written, and he compliments Totho’s reaction to the slaughters involved in war very well.

This is a Fantasy series that is worth reading.

But…

It has its problems. First, in book two, I can see that the author has several other books for something that should be a trilogy.

Second, and by far the biggest problem I have encountered, is that there are too many central characters whose heads we are continuously getting in. Thus to tell what happen in a day, we have to see it from 7 or 8 viewpoints spread across an entire continent. Keeping this down to three on the side of good, would have made the story manageable and sped up the pace.

And that is the third problem because of so many viewpoints, the pace is like a tango. Slow Slow, Quick Quick Slow. It is infuriating.

And ruins what otherwise would have been much better.

Aside from those, and they are not quibbles but major problems of crafting (I kept putting down the first 300 pages of this 450 page book and then forcing myself to read more) the concept is new and fresh. That the races of humanity, instead of Caucasian, or Asian, are Ant and Beetle, and Mantis and Wasp, with characteristics of the bugs.

Still, in a matter of crafting, we don’t know how they can be human, and then they can be different for half-breeds have big consequences one moment, and then everyone is just human and can work easily together the next. That issue could be revisited and clarified better.

I shall go on, but with each book needing to be forced to get started, I may never reread these.

This picks up right where the first books left off. Same great writing and characters, just more. Thalric is really is really a great character and continues his dark/light take on things in this one, while overcoming much adversary. And really the great development of ALL of the real characters in this series continues.

Crux: The characters do not drive the plot as much as the first book, and an abundance of deus ex machina (god in the machine) plot devices cause the plot threads to not feel very satisfying.

The one good plot thread, involving the young inventor, does not involve likable characters and helps this book break what I fealt was the promise of the first one; if you are expecting the plucky free thinkers of collegium(sp?) to thwart the wasp empire through ingenuity and intrigue, then this book will not deliver on that promise. Instead, the wasps have the better armies, tecnology, tactics, and organization.

This books lays the groundwork for a series in which the good guys only win by the help of sudden magical deus ex machina devices, rather than from their own ingenuity.

2 1/2 stars from me.

Spoiler alert!!! Stop reading now:
1. Collegium is saved by a mystical circle haunting the sieging ant army’s dreams, and external forces arriving at the last minute to save the day. This would be somewhat OK except there was seriously NO foreshadowing of either of these devices…they were just suddenly about to die, and then suddenly help has arrived. This is not satisfying to me…again deus ex machina feel.
2. The only defeat of the empire happens completely off the page by the mantids, in a twist I find rather odd.
3. The Thalric plot lines become odd and unbelievably twisted, especially the incredibly unsatisfying end to his mysterious stalker (–That whole thing definitely needed to be cut; he is persued the entire book by this force of nature, who in the end simply decided to let him live because she killed her entire family??? what???)
4. The characters take a back seat to endless battle scenes and no longer drive the plot, they are instead caught up in events.
5. A mystical all powerful talisman enters the fray (really??)

The first book was very satisfying (4 stars from me) but the follow up seems very hasty and much less tight. If you love war and the machinations of war, then you may find this book to be OK.

totally enthralling, stimulating, challenging, riveting. I think that this series is even better than his Echoes of the Fall series. With this one, Tchaikovski has definitely made it to my top 7 best Fantasy-SF writers.