Customer Reviews

Doppelganger

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Marie Brennan has created a new twist on the world of magic. Miryo is a young witch who goes through her testing to obtain her powers with magic only to find out that she can't use those powers until she kills her doppelganger. Apparently, all witches born are split in two at birth- one is the doppelganger and one is the witch. Generally, the doppelganger is killed at birth but because Miryo's doppelganger obtained a soul (by being exposed to starlight), her doppelganger can only be killed by Miryo herself. Miryo is therefore told that if she ever wants to use her magic (which now calls to her and is difficult to restrain from using), she must kill her doppelganger. Meanwhile, the doppelganger, Mirage, has become a Hunter and accepted a commission to find the murderer of the witch, Tari. Sha and her partner in the commission, Eclipse, become suspicious that other witches are behind Tari's death. Mirage and Miryo meet and both are unable mentally to kill the other so instead they begin searching for a way to set things right. The story is very complex but well worth reading. The glossary at the end is helpful with keeping up with the characters and the terminology of the world. It is particularly useful for understanding the structure and hierarchy of the witches in this world. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the next in the series. Highly recommended!

When a witch is born, a doppelganger is created. The mother normally kills the doppelganger on the fifth night during a ritual. The witch cannot master her powers until the twin is dead. Everyone knows this. Everyone accepts this.

When Miryo became a full witch, she was unable to use her magic. She must search the world to find her doppelganger, that has somehow survived, and kill it. Until then, Miryo must resist using her powers or they will kill her. But with each hour that passes it gets harder to keep from using those powers. Soon Miryo will be unable to resist. Miryo has another problem plaguing her mind too. Since the doppelganger has lived twenty-five years, will it still be a shell without a soul? And if it does have a soul, can Miryo bring herself to kill her twin?

Mirage is a bounty hunter. She lives by her wits and lethal fighting skills. This mission she must work with another hunter, Eclipse. This is not too difficult since she knows him well and they have worked together before. But this mission is a rare one. To accept it, Mirage and Eclipse must give a blood oath. They either succeed in the mission or die. Their task is to find out who assassinated Tari-nakana, a witch that was high in her Fire Order. After killing the person who did the deed, they must also go after the one who ordered it done. Sounds simple, but nothing is simple when it involves witches.

**** Hard to believe that this is Marie Brennan's debut novel. The author has crafted a divine world of magic and warriors. She gives just enough information to make it real. This could easily evolve into a wonderful series. Recommended. ****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

I finished Doppelganger in just over a day. The last novel I devoured as voraciously was Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.

This is a tight, exciting, tension-packed novel with pacing that forces a reader to plod ever onward. The cultures are well-formed, especially the witches and the Go Rin No Sho-style 5-elemental cosmology, along with other Japanese-influenced cultural bits like the many honorifics, which sent me into pleasantly twitchy flashbacks of my Japanese classes in high school.

The magic is evocative and complex without being overinvolved, weaving the elemental cosmology in with song. Magic's cosmological implications play an important part in the novel, to satisfying effects.

The fight scenes rock all over the place. The fights are exciting, clear, and most of all, I can easily visualize them in my mind. Some novels, the fights come up in my mind's eye as an abstraction, whereas in Doppelganger, I could go shot-to-shot in my imagination.

My only regret is that Warrior and Witch (the sequel) doesn't come out for another half-a-year.

Marie Brennan is well on her way to becoming a name in the fantasy genre.

So, if you haven't already, go and find yourself a copy.

In brief: This is a good book. An original world, interesting protagonists, a fun story, and a satisfying conclusion.

The book jumps back and forth between two points of view. Miryo is a young witch who must kill her doppelganger before she can control her own magic. Mirage is the doppelganger, a particularly gifted warrior and Hunter. Both characters are strong, independent, determined, and likable. Naturally, Miryo's mission to kill her double soon becomes far more complicated and messier than expected, drawing them into the middle of a conspiracy with the potential to destroy them both.

The doppelganger issue originally made me stumble a little. When a witch is born, a spell is cast to help her channel her magic, and to block that channel until she's ready. The side effect is a doppelganger, who must be killed if the witch is to survive and come into her power. To me, it felt a little forced. It's a wonderful setup for the novel, but I never understood why the doppelganger was a natural side effect of the magic, for instance. And for me, the ritual murder of infants is too drastic a thing to be glossed over by saying the infants don't have souls until they're five days old, so it's not really murder.

The story gets stronger as it goes. I like the relationship between Miryo and Mirage. In many ways, they truly are the same person, and it's fun to watch Brennan explore their similarities and differences, and the connection between them. They complement one another, and the book reflects that; the parts where the characters come together really do feel more complete than the earlier chapters.

Bonus points to Brennan for avoiding the typical medieval European fantasyland world. This is a world of Brennan's own creation, but its roots appear to be more Eastern in origin, which is refreshing. Yes, we have swords and magic and horses and witchcraft. But while some aspects were familiar, the book doesn't feel like something I've read a thousand times before. Brennan also incorporates religion and prayer into the story, not in an evangelistic, preachy way, but as a natural part of the world and the characters. Fantasy and SF sometimes tends to ignore or simplify religion, but Brennan presents a rich, honest faith, and shows both the good and the evil that can come of it.

The book includes a short preview of the sequel, Warrior and Witch. I rarely glance at these excerpts, but in this case, I immediately read it and wanted more. Happily, Warrior and Witch will be out in less than two months. Sooner would be better, but I suppose I can wait that long.

This novel takes an ancient concept, that there are five elements not four, and uses it for the basis of an original magic system. This concept is from several ancient cultures, all of whom agreed on what the first four elements were, but varied in what constitutes the fifth element. Marie Brennan choses the Void, or that which negates the other elements, as the fifth element in this book.

The original part of the concept is the creation of a Doppelganger 5 days after the birth of a magic child, always a girl for reasons explained at the end of the book. This is a splitting of the baby into two separate bodies, one with the ability to perform magic of the four traditional elements, and the other without the ability to perform magic but holding the control of the fifth element, the void. This seems to be done so that the magic channel can be blocked until the child is old enough and trained enough to handle it. If the fifth element cancels other magic it is probably necessary to remove that control until that time to allow the magic channel to be blocked. Leaving it available might allow the block to break before time.

Somehow this concept has been misunderstood and the doppelgangers are killed during the ritual before the child is exposed to starlight and gains a soul. After that time the doppelganger can only be killed by her other half. For this reason baby's are kept away from starlight until after the ritual so that the doppelganger can be killed by someone else before getting the protection of a soul. We learn that there are two groups who are trying to prevent this tragedy later on. Miryo's problem is that she can never use her magic unless she kills her doppelganger Mirage.

The action is well paced and original, which is promising for the series. It is a refreshing change from the usual magic swords/stones/etc of the average Fantasy novel. The use of magic is consistent and believable, including a believable origin for how such a system could come about, and why there are consequences. Pitting the Witch Miryo, who can't control her magic and has no advantage, against the Warrior Mirage actually leaves the advantage with Mirage, also a departure from the usual run of fantasy fare. Although the ending is one of several obvious possibilities, it is well written and highly believeable. Still, I won't ruin it for you - Enjoy!

Marie Brennan's "Doppelganger" was rather a find. Multiple interesting and sympathetic characters, plot twists that I didn't see coming, original world-building. And, y'know, sword and sorcery. I particularly liked her ninja-assassin Hunter characters, which was surprising as I'd expected the witch to be my favorite. The most surprising plot twist also kicked off a big train of interesting cosmological thought, causing me to wander around for the next day or so with a vaguely embarassing "whoa! dude!" sort of look on my face. [grin] In that, I think it achieves the highest ideal of speculative fiction; it makes you think. I've already wishlisted the sequel, which is not yet published, and look forward to it greatly.

After reading the first couple pages of this book, I almost stopped. I'm now glad that I continued. At first, when you read the jokes between Eclipse and Mirage, it seems like it's going to be another one of those unoriginal fantasy novels where there's sexual tension between the two main characters and they generally have childish dialogue...

It was not so for Doppleganger :). After reading further on, the dialogue at the beginning completely fits Mirage's character. She wasn't the stereotypical bounty hunter, the callous cold killer.

Miryo was okay, but I found myself attracted to Mirage's character more, which is odd since usually I favor magic over swords. Miryo was a bit too unoriginal for me, though.

Oh, another huge bonus to this book is that there is no love interest for the main character(s) to get tangled up in. I can say with absolute certainty that it is as Mirage said in the beginning; she and Eclipse are very good friends, like brother and sister, not at all like bf/gf.

I cannot give this book 5 stars though, because although it was written in a refreshing style, the story didn't have a completely original feel to it. I like the splitting of the self, though, and I especially like that the author didn't decide to make Mirage the "dark" half....Because then they would get into a discussion about how Mirage is not truly evil because there is no absolute evil and absolute good and....yeah, I'm sure you've heard it all before ;).

The most refreshing part of Marie Brennan's novel is her development of complex, interesting, and utterly unstereotypical female characters. It was lovely to read a fantasy novel with an almost exclusively female cast (and no obligatory romantic love entanglements for said characters). Unlike books like Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time or Sheri Tepper's The Gate To Women's Country, however, the world Brennan creates does not dogmatically emphasize the perils of patriarchy or the need for a more female ethic; Brennan simply paints a convincing world of strong female power. I also felt that the world building in the novel was particularly fresh (no cheap imitations of medieval culture here!). Clearly, Brennan knows how to use details to create a convincing, 3-dimensional, and authentic culture. The writing is simple and, in some places, a bit plain--but it never interferes with your experience of the story. The twists and turns kept me guessing, but certain elements of the story were a bit formulaic, and the characters were almost too internally consistent to be fully realistic. I read the book quickly, and enjoyed my experience immensely. Overall, a very good read!

I picked up this book because Marie Brennan is a graduate student at Indiana University where I also went to grad school, so I felt a connection there. Overall, Doppelganger is a good debut.

At first the story follows the separate lives of Mirage, a kick-butt warrior who has recently graduated from warrior school and makes her living by being commissioned for various dangerous tasks, and Miryo, a witch who has been in school and has just failed her "final exam" because of the existence of Mirage, the doppelganger. Every witch has a doppelganger who is supposed to be killed while they are babies so that the magic power can be controlled by the witch. Because Mirage was not killed, Miryo must hunt her down and kill her.

Meanwhile, Mirage and her friend Eclipse (he's also a warrior), have just taken on a murder investigation that ends up uncovering the plot of some rogue witches to let the doppelgangers live. Eventually, Mirage's and Miryo's paths cross as each woman sets out to meet her own goals which end up colliding with the other's.

Doppelganger was well-written and Marie Brennan has a good ear for dialogue. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of both Mirage and Miryo in their respective school programs. It was obvious to me that Ms Brennan is using her own grad school experience because I've been through the exact same thing. The way she talked about Mirage and Eclipse, as year mates, being like brother and sister was right on; I likewise had a male year mate who was like a brother to me during that ordeal. I could totally relate to that, and to the other aspects of school (advisors, qualifying exams, studying) that she described.

The story was interesting, but I had some issues. First of all, it annoyed me when characters didn't ask some obvious questions of their advisors or the people they worked for. As one example, why didn't Miryo ask her advisors why she had to kill the doppelganger herself? She had no travel or fighting experience and the witches had the resources to hire others to do this sort of job. At first I thought this was a plot hole and was surprised at what seemed like a graduate student's lack of logic. But, later this question was answered logically and reasonably, but I still wondered why Miryo didn't think to ask it at the beginning.

One other thing that I felt needed improvement was the description of the major characters. I had been assuming, based on the cover of the book, that Mirage had long hair, but I was surprised to find out half way through that she had "cropped" hair. Also, Eclipse was never well-described which disappointed me because, as the only "good" male character in the novel, I would have liked to have been able to visualize him. The villains (Ice, the bad witches, Wraith) could have been deeper and more impressive characters with a bit more description of their looks and mannerisms.

Lastly, the issues between Mirage and Miryo were too quickly overcome. I would have liked to have seen them hunt each other for a while (or at least distrust each other more), but nearly as soon as they met they decided to work things out. That was a bit anti-climatic. And though I did like the ending, it all seemed a bit too easy.

Despite these issues, I think Marie Brennan writes well (which is more than half the battle won) and therefore, this is a good debut from a promising new author. --FantasyLiterature.net

Brennan's first novel is a slick, thrilling read from start to finish. Her world setting is unique but never alien, and her storytelling gives fantasy fans everything they could ask for -- flavorful magic, thrilling fighting, political intrigue -- without ever seeming derivative or stereotypical. This promises to be a deeply satisfying series from an exciting new voice in fantasy fiction.