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A review by maxierosalee
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
Rating: 3.5 stars.
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Should have been called "Exposition Dump: The Novel."
This is one of those books that had a stellar premise but was unfortunately marred by subpar execution.
A woman, Myfawny, wakes up in a park with absolutely no memory of who she is and is only guided by letters written by herself from before she was saddled with her amnesia. As it turns out, she's a person of significant supernatural ability in a secret organization whose job is to protect the world from supernatural phenomena while also keeping them secret from the general populous. The basis of this premise has been used many times before, but it's an appealing facet of worldbuilding that's led to many successful and endearing properties before.
The main issue is that this kind of setup requires a lot of knowledge to be passed onto the reader so that they know what's going on. And this leads to now of the trickiest parts of writing...exposition. Sometimes, the only way to give readers the knowledge they need about the world in your story is just through telling them in prose. And if it's written in a genuinely engaging way, I usually don't mind. In fact, I think learning about an interesting world can be fun.
In this book, it is not fun. Much of the exposition we are given through Myfawny's letters from before she got amnesia. It's a very cool setup that's dampened by the fact that these letters go on for pages. They make up entire chapters in some cases. The letters that detail was Myfawny was doing before she got amnesia and are tied to the plot are kind of interesting, at least. But half of them are just info-drops on certain individuals, about the Chequey organization, things like that that aren't connected to the plot. It brings the story to a grinding, uninteresting halt. And it's a shame because I already think the book has pacing issues, where it feels like the plot plods along in the early-mid section of the book before suddenly ramping up around the 60% mark, and then slowing down in favor of a subplot of introducing another character to Myfawny before ramping up once more around the 80% mark.
It also doesn't help that Myfawny in general is one of those clever and snarky protagonists. She always quipping about things, likes to make nonchalant comments in tense situations, and has skewed priorities (asking for coffee during important operations). These kinds of characters, I find, are very hard to write well. I've only seen them pulled off a handful of times. Most of the time, they're just incredibly annoying and also hurt the atmosphere in a book. How am I supposed to take anything seriously in this book when the character doesn't themselves? How am I supposed to find weight in anything that happens in the story when the character is treating it like a big inconvenience?
It's really too bad because there are some really cool concepts in here. Some of the characters, like Gestalt, were a fascinating character concept that I thought was interesting to see fleshed out. The main villains of the book (no spoilers) had some great, visceral descriptions going for them. Ingrid was cool. Alrich was also kind of cool. There was one part in the book that got a genuine chuckle out of me and I thought was kind of legitimately clever and not the artificial cleverness the book tries to make us think (won't put details because of spoilers).The last part of the book where the plot ramps up did kind of have me hooked and I read through it pretty fast.
This book has a sequel, which makes sense considering how the book ended. Too bad I'm not interested in continuing.
_______________
Should have been called "Exposition Dump: The Novel."
This is one of those books that had a stellar premise but was unfortunately marred by subpar execution.
A woman, Myfawny, wakes up in a park with absolutely no memory of who she is and is only guided by letters written by herself from before she was saddled with her amnesia. As it turns out, she's a person of significant supernatural ability in a secret organization whose job is to protect the world from supernatural phenomena while also keeping them secret from the general populous. The basis of this premise has been used many times before, but it's an appealing facet of worldbuilding that's led to many successful and endearing properties before.
The main issue is that this kind of setup requires a lot of knowledge to be passed onto the reader so that they know what's going on. And this leads to now of the trickiest parts of writing...exposition. Sometimes, the only way to give readers the knowledge they need about the world in your story is just through telling them in prose. And if it's written in a genuinely engaging way, I usually don't mind. In fact, I think learning about an interesting world can be fun.
In this book, it is not fun. Much of the exposition we are given through Myfawny's letters from before she got amnesia. It's a very cool setup that's dampened by the fact that these letters go on for pages. They make up entire chapters in some cases. The letters that detail was Myfawny was doing before she got amnesia and are tied to the plot are kind of interesting, at least. But half of them are just info-drops on certain individuals, about the Chequey organization, things like that that aren't connected to the plot. It brings the story to a grinding, uninteresting halt. And it's a shame because I already think the book has pacing issues, where it feels like the plot plods along in the early-mid section of the book before suddenly ramping up around the 60% mark, and then slowing down in favor of a subplot of introducing another character to Myfawny before ramping up once more around the 80% mark.
It also doesn't help that Myfawny in general is one of those clever and snarky protagonists. She always quipping about things, likes to make nonchalant comments in tense situations, and has skewed priorities (asking for coffee during important operations). These kinds of characters, I find, are very hard to write well. I've only seen them pulled off a handful of times. Most of the time, they're just incredibly annoying and also hurt the atmosphere in a book. How am I supposed to take anything seriously in this book when the character doesn't themselves? How am I supposed to find weight in anything that happens in the story when the character is treating it like a big inconvenience?
It's really too bad because there are some really cool concepts in here. Some of the characters, like Gestalt, were a fascinating character concept that I thought was interesting to see fleshed out. The main villains of the book (no spoilers) had some great, visceral descriptions going for them. Ingrid was cool. Alrich was also kind of cool. There was one part in the book that got a genuine chuckle out of me and I thought was kind of legitimately clever and not the artificial cleverness the book tries to make us think (won't put details because of spoilers).The last part of the book where the plot ramps up did kind of have me hooked and I read through it pretty fast.
This book has a sequel, which makes sense considering how the book ended. Too bad I'm not interested in continuing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Incest