Sixth book in the Nightrunner series, following
The White Road (Nightrunner). New readers could treat this as a stand-alone adventure, but many details won't make sense unless you've read the preceding books, particularly
Traitor's Moon (Nightrunner, Vol. 3). Some spoilers follow.
It's summer in Rhíminee, Skala's mighty capital city. Seregil and Alec are living the high life of wealthy nobles, socialising and partying even as the city becomes increasingly stressed by the distant war with Plenimar and the influx of refugees. Yet they are also Watchers, charged with defending the Crown, so when plots against the royal family begin to materialise and a mysterious plague strikes, they employ all their skills at spying, subterfuge and fighting to unravel these mysteries before disaster hits and the personal cost to them becomes even higher. But the key to so many deadly events lies in a direction they never expected.
You should like this if you want 1) more of Seregil and Alec no matter what, or 2) an imaginative, city-based, adventure story with plenty of action and intrigue that's an easy read and you aren't particularly fussed about the fine detail. There's a lot going on and plenty of fantasy trimmings.
After the disappointments of Shadows Return and The White Road I didn't expect much from The Casket of Souls. I did hope for it, though, so despite myself I was rather disappointed by this.
Up to a point I really did find this book fun and promising, as it seemed that truly significant events were taking shape and I was enjoying the process of discovery and the introduction of new elements, such as Princess Elani and court society. But once the two Rhíminee-based plots came together and it became clear that a huge chunk of the plot had no consequences and was merely obfuscation to delay Seregil and Alec's tracking down the real villain, the book lost me. It's never a good sign when a spy/law enforcement story has you continually asking yourself "but why didn't the characters do this?" or "why haven't they already done that?" Nor is it a good sign when there seems to be so much that supposedly expert spies never notice, question or think of. It undermines the characters and the plot and so overall, I found myself with a story that was longer than it needed to be, didn't show the characters to their best advantage and had no real payoff in the end.
Indeed, for me the whole plot had a perfunctory feel to it. The war didn't feel real and seemed little more than a convenient way to make certain things happen. Neither of the two intrigues that Seregil and Alec investigated were fully explained or wrapped up. So many of those killed off were just names that their deaths had no impact. The ultimate villains had no motivation beyond being evil and their power had no explanation. Lots of minor details were wrong, didn't mesh or simply went nowhere.
These flaws have been scattered throughout Flewelling's previous books, to a degree, but I found them far harder to overlook this time; in part because they were genuinely more significant, but mostly because I found myself emotionally disengaged from the story. Flewelling kept telling me how much this mattered to the characters but I didn't feel it. Seregil and Alex felt somewhat distant from the plot, even from each other; it seemed a story they happened to be in, rather than a story that was fully theirs. I was also disturbed by out-of-character violence, in particular Micum murdering someone in a frenzy and Alec ready to kill law enforcement officers just for doing their job.
There was an occasional clunky feel to the prose, especially with the overuse of commas and the way dialogue is framed (and I felt like throwing the book across the room every time I read yet another repetition of "Alec told him"); Flewelling is certainly capable of much better. The sudden crudities really jarred. Flewelling still thinks battles last for hours and hours and that it's possible to split one arrow already stuck in a target with another. I guess she doesn't watch Mythbusters, then. Beka's promotion scene was just crass, and in combination with a number of other factors that have now been resolved gave the book something of a clearing-the-decks feel.
If there is to be another entry in this series, especially one that takes it in a new direction, I imagine I'll read it - the characters and setting do offer a lot, the plots are always imaginative and some of the previous books really have been very good indeed - but like I said above, I just don't expect much anymore. To experience Flewelling at her best, read
Luck in the Shadows (Nightrunner, Vol. 1) and
Stalking Darkness (Nightrunner, Vol. 2).
Rated PG-13.
Language: one instance of bad language
Violence: significant and with consequences, but not graphic
Sex: minor sex scenes (including homosexual) but not graphic, glamorised prostitution
