Customer Reviews

The Wizard Hunters: Book One of the Fall of Ile-Rien (Fall of the Ile-Rien)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been hooked on Martha Wells since I stumbled across The Element of Fire. She's managed to make it to a very elite list of mine - the buy on sight list. Wells has an ability to draw excellent characters without sacrificing any attention to plot or setting. In fact, throughout her books (The two stand-alones and the Il-Rien books), she's managed to explore new and interesting worlds and people them with characters you want to spend time with.

This new book, the beginning to a trilogy set in Il-Rien (at least initially) doesn't disapoint. Tremaine is one of her most engaging heroines, especially as that's probably the last way she would think of herself. As is usual for Wells, secondary characters aren't stinted; there aren't any two-dimensional people wandering around in the background while your attention is supposed to be focused on the leads. I keep reccomending Martha Wells to friends, and at this rate, I will be able to keep on doing so.

Some qualifications. I am more a fan of heroic/sword & sorcery style fantasy. Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, C. L. Moore, JRR Tolkien, etc. Next, I did not realize until I finshed the book there is a prequel (Death of a Necromancer).

Ile-Rien is a land populated by wizards which is under attack by the Gardier, a mysterious enemy in dirigible like ships who use technology and magic together. Ile-Rien is slowly succumbing to the attacks, until the wizards realize they have a weapon to try against the Gardier. This mission to try the weapon against the Gardier is told from the viewpoint of a woman named Tremaine.

At 454 pages, this story plods along. There are a lot of descriptive passages throughout; while this can be seen as evidence that Wells has tried to create a convincing fantasy world, it gets in the way of telling the story and moving the plot along. I would argue, that Wells trips up in the creation of her fantasy world though when she mentions things like automobiles, coffee, and telephones.

The epsiodic nature of the book is vaguely reminiscent of the old pulps at times, with Tremaine and her friends going from "Burroughs-esque" adventure to adventure. The interspersed, detailed descriptions are what slow the story down though. (Yes, I don't need every single detail described--I have an imagination...)

The book also suffers from the plot being somewhat predictable. The only real surprise comes towards the end when the source of the Gardier's power is revealed--whether Wells develops this in the rest of the series remains to be seen.

From looking at the Amazon reviews, its clear this book will appear to some people. And that's great. If you like some of the writers I mentioned above though, I think you will find this book disappointing.

The first sentence of this book should grab just about anyone. Right off hand, you know this is a suicidal heroine, but you don't know why. You also get the idea that one of the characters might be an unidentified wizard, but you don't know that for sure. And it is very much to the author's credit that both questions are resolved by the end of the book in such a way that's true to the characters involved, rather than carrying them over to the next book.

Obviously, THE FALL OF ILE-RIEN trilogy will be concerned with revolution and social change in this land of magic and of wizards. The beginning book deals with the attack and conquest of this land by the Gardier, a mysterious enemy helped by their evil wizards. Tremaine Vallarde who lacks magical skills but possesses a sphere which has within it power to defeat the Gardier finds herself along with a female student wizard, a former guardian with wizardly powers, and a young security agent who's apparantly enamored of her transported to a strange world. The Gardier are using a base on this world as a gateway to Ile-Rien. The wizard hunters referred to in the book's titled belong to a race which knows only of the evil wizards who misuse their magic.

This alternate world's distrust of those who work magic along with the initial inability of the two races to speak a common language causes an uneasy alliance, and so the story and adventures go from there.

One of the good points of this story is the lack of romantic entanglements in spite of the fact that two of the five younger characters are comely women. The strong characterization of these characters makes it obvious that there'll be no fast blooming infatuations or love here, although I expect that will change in the middle book of the trilogy.

And so vivid characterization, deft plotting, underlying logic and unanswered questions make this a most enjoyable read with a quite satisfying ending, and yet a yearning to read more about Ile-rien. Highly recommended fantasy adventure.

The Wizard Hunters underwhelmed me. It is competently written and features at least two well-drawn characters, but the storyline and writing did not engage me. The pacing felt imbalanced: slow at the start, quick in the middle, and then almost too fast at the end. The writing seemed dispassionate to me, as if the author were reporting events instead of showing them. To be fair, I credit the author with creating intelligent characters. In other novels, I often know things before the characters do; in this novel, Tremaine came to conclusions around the same time I did. I read a lot of fantasy and do not consider The Wizard Hunters a great achievement; however, I will read another Martha Wells' novel to see if my average opinion of this novel is warranted.

Martha Wells has made a career by working at the boundary between magic and science, and in "The Wizard Hunters," she returns her readers to Ile-Rien, a place she's brought us to twice before.

The setting in this volume seems to approximate the Europe of the 1920s. There's electricity, telephones, and automobiles, as well as wizards, wards, and spells. And the land is faced with an alien invasion in the form of "the Gardier," conquerers from elsewhere who arrive in spellbusting dirigibles that can wreck things made of metal. Like guns and electronic equipment.

But where is elsewhere? The author's heroine, Tremaine Valiarde (daughter of Nicholas Valiarde from "Death of the Necromancer"), is enlisted--well she enlists herself really in order to avoid her suicidal impulses. As Florian the young witch tells her: "It's like you're two people. One of them is a flighty artist, and I like her. The other one is bloody-minded and ruthless and finds scary things funny and I'm not sure I like her very much."

Whatever she is, she, along with her magical sphere that seems to have a mind of its own and can provide a counter-attack against the Gardier, turns into one of the most fascinatingly capable (if neurotic) protagonists you're likely to meet on the pages of any book. And in addition you'll meet not only her and the young witch, but also a host of people, from several societies on two different worlds. And there are plenty of scaring things to be encountered also.

The author's burnished prose moves along in a stately fashion, overcoming along the way a few apparent deficiencies in the plot. Ms. Wells occasionally manages to write herself into a corner, forcing her to create side quests to resolve plot issues that she needn't have created in the first place. On the whole, though, the author delivers on her promises.

Notes and asides: "The Wizard Hunters" is, yes, the first of three; but it concludes satisfactorily. It's BOOK 1 of the Fall of Ile-Rein alright; not a thinly disguised PART 1 that will leave you dangling. So fear not; read it now. No reason why you need to wait for the conclusion.

Martha Wells weaves a nicely complicated tapestry of mythology in The Wizard Hunters, the first installment of The Fall of Ile-Rien series. The book's very first sentence indicates exactly how unusual a fantasy epoch Wells writes: "It was nine o'clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in Court when someone banged on the door."

After hooking the reader's interest, Wells becomes an unrelenting story teller, blending the mythology of a modernistic culture with the mythology of a aborigine culture. In Tremaine Valiarde's possession is a mysterious sphere of unknown power. The sphere is a childhood toy given Tremaine by an uncle who turned out to be a wizard of enormous power.

A bizarre army of beings is besieging Tremaine's homeland. These beings-Gardier-control powerful airships that seemingly come from nowhere to attack Tremaine's homeland of Ile-Rien.

The sphere transports Tremaine and some friends to an island in another world. Coincidentally, the island is a base for the airships of the Gardier. Before Tremaine makes her accidental journey, two brothers from a nearby aborigine tribe journey to the island to see if an enemy sorcerer is still controlling the island. These two young men discover a hive of strange activity and what they initially believe are strange flying whales.

Wells writes an extremely good story that ranks with the likes of Modesitt, Hobb, Haydon, and Douglass. She weaves a colorful cast of characters, story, action, setting, and other elements into a powerful fantasy tale. Tremaine Valiarde is an unusual heroine and it will be interesting to see how she develops as a character throughout the rest of The Fall of Ile-Rien.

The off world Gardier use powerful magic to invade the land of Ile-Rien. The off-world military are winning on all fronts defeating the natives at sea, on the land, and in the air. Unless something is done quickly, the people of Ile-Rien will become enslaved. A magical artifact attached to Tremaine Valiarde transports her and two sorceress to the Isle of Storms.

They meet the Syrneiese warrior Ilias and Giliead who have come to the island to see if an evil wizard has taken up residence there. The two groups team up when the Gardier, who have an outpost in a huge cave on the island, captures them. Working together, they escape and go to the homeland of Ilias and Giliead and then back to Ile-Rien to get an army together that will destroy the Gardier outpost and subsequently the means of traveling between the two worlds.

Book one of the Fall of Ile-Rien is a fantastic opening installment in what looks to be a great fantasy epic. The heroine, a potential suicide victim, finds she has something to live for, as she becomes a freedom fighter intent on saving two worlds from Gardier domination. Martha Wells is an excellent world builder, a writer who makes the audience believes that the Gardier and the two worlds they want to conquer actually exist.

Harriet Klausner

I am a little bit annoyed at myself that I waited so long to read this book. I always really like Wells' novels, but there is something unassuming about them in that I often find that too long goes between reading one book and the next. Before this I've read The Death of the Necromancer, The Element of Fire and Wheel of the Infinite.

This book is the first installment in a series called The Fall of Ile-Rien, but it isn't the first visit Wells has made to that world. I was delighted to come back to the world and the Valiarde family, and even though it has been a while, I found it easy to swim right back into the text.

Wells has a particular way of combining steampunk elements with high fantasy to create easily digestible and fun stories that don't have as many sharp edges as some of the more pure steampunk writers. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends entirely on the reader's mood and what they would like to get out of the book. She is also quite a skilled writer, and has a vivid way with character and world-building that I particularly enjoy.

I had one major quarrel with this book, and that has to do with the set-up of Tremaine Valiard's character arc.

(I don't actually think that it's a spoiler to reveal something from the first paragraph of the book, but if you don't want to know *anything* about the plot, then don't read below this sentence, please.)

The book opens with Tremaine contemplating suicide and this is a character element that is supposed to carry her change arc and internal struggle. I found it nearly wholly unbelievable and not well-grounded in the back story that we are given. This alone made it very difficult for me to get into the book in the early part of the novel. I will admit, however, that I lack a sense of humor about suicidal tendencies and ideation so perhaps I was simply too sensitive to the subject to like the way that Wells used it as a device.

All in all, very much looking forward to reading The Ships of Air.

This is the first book in The Fall Of Ile-Rien trilogy. It wasn't until I had started reading it that I realised that there is a prequel called THE DEATH OF THE NECROMANCER that features many of the characters prominently mentioned (but not actually there) in this story.

Tremaine is the daughter of Ile-Rien's greatest thief and spy. She's also the owner of a sphere that was given to her as a child which may prove the last salvation of their people in the three year long war against the Gardier. This war and Tremaine's world of magic and technology give her home a feeling of either first or second world war London under siege. Her people are on the verge of loosing everything to an enemy that they seem to have no defence against.

As an introductory novel to a trilogy this is a good read. It moves along at a fast pace and the final chapters bring unexpected knowledge to all the characters. I'm looking forward to reading book 2 in this series, THE SHIPS OF THE AIR.

This is a difficult book to discuss simply because so very many of the exceptional and noteworthy things I could mention are also significant spoilers.

Suffice it to say that the main characters are all interesting and engaging, and that there are no cookie-cutter heroes or heroines here. Tremaine in particular is not what anyone would expect -- she's not even what she would expect! -- and that's part of the book's humor and appeal.

Although this is an 'epic' story, it's definitely not in the Tolkien tradition, and the settings and actions and resolutions feel completely new. Ile-Rien and the Gardier are considerably more 'modern' than your typical magic users, their cultures using a mix of both magic and machinery. Which is another point in the book's favor: the different cultures are fleshed out and real. The cultural issues feel real.

This is a story with layers. The characters are three-dimensional. The world is three dimensional. There is more going on than is immediately apparent in the first few chapters. Exactly how Ilias and Giliead fit in to Tremaine's story is unexpected.

I absolutely enjoyed this book and the entire series. While not my absolute favorite, that's not a flaw in the story but a matter of personal preference (I generally like a little more fluff and a little less dark). It is, however, definitely something I would recommend (and have), and will read again.