The Bush League Critic

I gotta tell ya: I'm really kind of digging these relatively (as yet) unknown works I've been reading lately. I've probably gotten extremely lucky with the ones that I've chosen, but hey -- someone needs to be reading and reviewing them... and it's not like Rothfuss's Wise Man's Fear really needs any more ass-kissing at the moment, right? Please note that while I call what I do 'reviewing', it's a rather loose interpretation of the term and it's probably closer to musing or rambling -- lets call it re-museling.

Anyway, What Time Forgets... the blurb:

Seers and cutthroat politicians, technocrats and a warrior class, jockey for power in a world where memories imperil the future. A soldier and a determined young woman, adversaries with their own secrets, ally to find the key that will avert a terrible reckoning on their world. A prophecy takes them from a mercenary’s stronghold to an oracle’s decaying temple, on to a monastery’s long-buried secrets and, finally, to a violent confrontation in a long-ruined fortress at sea’s edge. A final justice may well sacrifice everything they know.

Alright, first off... I'm not going to tell you that this was the greatest book I've ever read in my entire life. What I am going to tell you is that I enjoyed it quite a bit. It has some very strong (likeable characters) in Zoë and Tiernan and the plot is very dialogue-driven. Which means that rather than employing the tried and worn out "World-building by largely unnecessary (and boring) infodumps from an omniscient narrator" technique, the author chose my personal favorite "World-revealing by natural conversation taking place between characters who are going about their various plot-ty duties" technique. In other words... you get little peeps and glimpses of the larger world that the city of Ard Creggan is a part of (from the people who actually live in that world), but most of it is left to the reader's imagination.That scores big, big points with me! Nothing worse than a micro-managing author who doesn't trust a speculative fiction reader to have a vivid imagination of their own.

Speaking of worlds... Redmond's world is unique. Kind of a hybrid of surreal/normal/(not quite) weird that's really rather hard to nail down. But the world is vivid -- and has history -- and the various plot-lines in What Time Forgets are about digging into that history to unravel some ancient mysteries about certain artifacts, blood-lines and prophecies (please don't interpret that as Dan Brown-esqe!). The mystery was more than enough to keep me turning pages (not to mention making a few editing glitches seem immaterial) all the way to the end. While there were a few unpolished bits of prose that I caught my "toes" on along the way, the vast majority of the writing was quite strong.

Which brings me to the end. And the good news is... THERE IS ONE! And if that weren't enough, it's a pretty satisfying one to boot. It seems obvious to me that there will probably be sequels to this particular book, but this one can definitely stand on its own two feet. Which scores high marks on the Bushleague Critic's Stand Alonish-ness scale.

I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that there may have been some political and social subtext pointing out the dangers of "us or them" bipartisanship and  the silliness of xenophobic, intolerant immigration stances. Either that, or I'm completely full of shit and reading too much into the words -- which is quite possible. Subtext is pretty "hit or miss" with me.

If my arm were twisted to give a ranking or a grade of some type, I'd probably go with a B. But I believe the author is certainly capable of an A.