leaving the rest of us to play catch-up at times, but in a world imagined this intensely, there's always going to be more detail than can ever be brought into any one storyline.
That's the case here--the reader is left entirely convinced that, around any corner, in any cupboard, whether we find ourselves in a hovel, castle, mansion, or country, aboard a ship or aboard a stallion, still more consistent but surprising detail lurks, waiting to be found.
While I understand the annoyance of the reviewer below--a stutterer herself, who finds the character of the "evil," stuttering heir-to-the-throne too one-dimensional--the stuttering is NOT actually portrayed as the root of the prince's evil. In fact, this prince is presented sympathetically in several respects: at several different points, he attempts to resist his "weaknesses," the less-than-noble character traits we all have. But his "evil" uncle consistently undercuts the prince's efforts. And even the uncle is not presented as inherently evil, but as rather-complexly conflicted--so driven by his own need to demonstrate his loyalty that he's ultimately led into disloyally. The uncle's motivating passions and jealousies are themselves traced back to an earlier generation's envies and enmities.
Ultimately, the elite, governing strata of Inda's society is shown to contain its own vein of weakness: an "Achilles' heel" of abusive behavior, in which brothers are pitted against one another, supposedly to develop their strength. As with the British "public" school system, sometimes strength and bonding emerge from this corrupt cauldron; sometimes cruelty and competitiveness are fostered instead.
And this unhealthy system itself is shown to have understandable antecedents in the history of the culture--horse-borne conquerors trying to adapt to the settled ways of the more-sophisticated and civilized agrarian culture is has managed to overcome militarily.
The "conquered" culture itself is fighting back in various covert ways to absorb the conquerors and make them over, even as--within the culture of the overlords--the genders find themselves covertly working at cross purposes, even developing contrasting systems of personal combat.
Which leads us to the issue of Inda's "heroic" perfection: superb strategist, fighter, leader... Again, however, we are shown--to a certain extent, since Inda does seem to have an inborn talent for integrating data under pressure--how Inda comes by the skills he has. as much through loss and misery as through glory and gain. For he too is shown both as the intended highest product of a "war-gaming" culture and as that culture's victim (and, perhaps, its ultimate nemesis): Inda-the-child is shown receiving the benefit of the "female" as well as the male sides of the culture (via his mother, his sister, and his bride-to-be). Somebody in a given culture is bound to embody--or surpass--the traits the culture deems most desirable. Interestingly, of course, when those in power begin to perceive the heroic coming-together of too many "desirable" traits in a single individual, efforts are made to suppress and sideline the hero before he can fully emerge from his chrysalis.
Sherwood deftly rings changes on the boot-camp, ranger-training, elite boy's-school theme--so familiar from hundreds of fictional outings, from nearly any recent "military" sci-fi novel, going back through Honor Harrington and "Ender" to prototypes in the British fiction of the 18th and 19th Centuries--and then has her chosen hero EJECTED from the midst of the "band of brothers" he has forged into yet another familiar variant of the matured-in-hardship genre, the shipboard coming-of-age story--which we can again trace back through Harrington and her proteges through the Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian to the Horatio Hornblower tales to Kipling's "Captains Courageous" and on...
There aren't any new plot devices, folks, just interesting new ways to combine all the good old archetypes with fresh, fully-realized settings and scads of engrossing characters! Heck, we've even got a version of David and Bathsheba here (which makes perfect sense in this "band of brothers" culture). Oh, and did I mention THE PIRATES!
Despite the seeming familiarity of some of these tropes, Sherwood does interesting new things with all her material. In large part, this is because Sherwood doesn't just receive and regurgitate all that's tried and true in tales of this kind, she subjects the underlying premises to intense scrutiny and devises diabolical ways to subject those underlying premises to strain--thus revealing their inevitable faults, joints, and failure points.
For those of you who mourn favorite fallen characters--don't be too sure they are all gone for good! While gritty fictional realism requires some of the characters with whom we identify to fail or fall, suffer and be betrayed, some of those we thought dead and gone from earlier pages reappear in the last few. Others we now think lost may yet return--or not!
Yet despite all the political chicanery and the welter of shifting alliances and betrayals, Sherwood never slips into the grim mood that infects some of our best-written recent fantasy fiction--of utter nihilism, senseless sadism, and ultimate futility. There are still characters aplenty here who transcend their limits, live and die for admirable principles--heroes for whom to cheer, even as dynasties rise and fall around them.
I, for one, was thrilled to read that "Inda II" is off to the publisher! Now please excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard...
