01 July 2010

Book Banter -- Naamah's Curse


Title: Naamah's Curse
Author: Jacqueline Carey
Length: 567 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Plot Basics: Moirin is miles from her Alban home in Ch'in, and missing the other half of her soul -- which is inside her peasant-boy lover, Bao. Desperate to be re-united to him, she sets off alone across the get Ch'in wildnerness and the northern Tatar steppes. The reunification is a lengthy process that pits Moirin and Bao against a zealous priest, determined to convert her, and then against a warlord and his army of assassins and an evil queen with an enchanted gem that bends mens' wills to her.

Banter Points: Word Nerd has mixed feelings about this book. She liked it, but there were parts where it seemed desperately slow. All of Carey's books are these grand sweeping epics and it's impossible for them to be all action, all the time because of that scale. The action sequences in this book were great and the thing that kept me reading was how Carey propelled things with Moirin's impatience to be reunited with Bao.

Bummer Points: That said, it was kind of slow. Moirin had to meet and talk to all kind of people in all these different locales. Word Nerd's hoping that book three in this series will be good, that two was kind of the boring middle bit.

Word Nerd Recommendation: The Naamah series, so far, just hasn't been as good to Word Nerd as the six books in the two Kushiel trilogies. That said, Carey creates a lush world that's fun to visit from time to time. It's likely worth sticking with the series to see what happens next.

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