A valuable item has been stolen from the mysterious Tiankong Empire. When the envoy Xi’Lao requests aid, Raylan is one of those chosen for an elite squad on a dangerous retrieval mission into enemy territory. Their mission succeeds – but the group finds that they are cut off from their homeland, in possession of something that their enemy will pay dearly to take back, and facing monsters, predators and dangerous terrain. As they fight their way back towards their homeland, the item reveals its secrets – and Raylan discovers that he now has one more thing that he must protect with his life.
Windcatcher is the first in the Stone War Chronicles series. The story follows Raylan, sent on a mission to retrieve an item – and it turns out to be a dragon called Galirras (that’s a slight spoiler, but that’s as far as I’ll go). The mission takes them from their homeland into the mountains of enemy territory, and then – when their retreat is cut off – on a trek across the forests towards the coast in the hope of rescue.
The book’s action-packed and fast-paced, set in a richly-developed world, culture and scenery. It’s a tense adventure with some lovely relationships, all framed by a conflict that’s becoming a lot bigger than any of the characters anticipate.
However, I will have to admit that I’m not a fan of classic fantasy when it simply uses the cliché that’s grown up in the genre: the baddies are bad, the hero is good. There’s magic. There’s dragons (well, one, in this case). Even though the author has avoided many of the worst tropes from fantasy and has created an interesting world, I still found the book too derivative and influenced to really be able to see it as unique. The author lists Naomi Novik and Anne McCafferey as influences, and certainly Temeraire comes through very strongly. There’s some really good worldbuilding and the use of the varying cultures and styles is really well done, but I found myself mentally using a checklist; Tibetan monks, Chinese empire, dragon hatching, dark looming baddies with no souls. Despite this, the generic elements didn’t overbalance the book and there were some nice elements – I liked the tree-community, and the contrast between the squad and their various surroundings as well as their reactions to the foreign world were excellently done. The characters of Raylan and Galirras, Gavin and Xi’Lao, the squad of soldiers that surrounded them, were all very well done; the action melded nicely between down-time with conversations and fast-paced fighting or tense drama. The three main bad guys were also very well characterised with a lot of tension coming out of their interactions, and I loved the goh’lems and their implementation; it’s a really interesting idea and I look forward to seeing how it’s used in the rest of the series.
However, there were a couple of niggles that got to me throughout the book. One was the constant point-of-view switches, often within the same chapter; it frustrated me to be able to ‘hear’ one character’s voice, and then suddenly switch over to another, making me wonder what I’d missed out on (more Galirras!). I felt that the bad side contained too many clichés for me to be able to give them any serious thought; pretty much every stereotype in the list was pulled out to display how awful they are, including child-killing, pedophilia and torture, not to mention the standard “not caring for the underlings” and “cruel, heartless and ruthless”. The other major niggle that got to me was the secondary characters. With three exceptions, women were relegated to victims or servants when there could easily have been more diversity included just by changing names or genders. There was a brief nod to more diversity with two of the side characters, and while I appreciated that the romance aspects of the book weren’t dwelt on, I would have liked to see a little more of them than the one brief mention. I also thought that Xi’Lao was an interesting character, and I hope we see more of her in the next books in the series as the focus of this one was definitely on Raylan and Galirras – who are both interesting characters, and I loved the way their relationship developed.
It’s unlikely all readers will agree with these niggles. I have to admit that I’m usually pretty OK with the odd old trope here and there, but this just tipped me over the balance into not enjoying the story. However, overall Windcatcher is well-written, and there are also some interesting hooks for the rest of the series; who is the Stone King talking to? Are they going to get to [spoiler] in time to prevent [spoiler]? How is Galirras’ and Raylan’s relationship going to develop in a new setting?
If you like classic action fantasy with dragons and adventure, you’ll definitely like this – but you may find that the clichés just get a bit too wearing.
The second book in the series, Wavebreaker, is due in 2016.
© Kate Coe, June 2016
Windcatcher by A J Norfield
Published October 29th 2015
http://www.ajnorfield.com
Review copy courtesy of the author
333 pages
