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38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
this was the pared-down version?, August 9, 2006
I waited for this book a long time - had it pre-ordered when it was first scheduled for release, and then the release was delayed for additinal revisions. I have much enjoyed Sherwood Smith's books and short stories set in this world. And I enjoyed Inda, a lot. The world she built is complex and sophisticated (although strangely lacking even mention of religious structure - no matter your personal beliefs, all cultures tend to have a faith system to explain and express spirituality...and it usually becomes entwined in some fashion with governing bodies, for good or evil.) Her chararcters have depth, and are interesting to follow. Inda, the main character, is a joy, and I like Smith's trick of showing how Inda is seen through the eyes of other characters - different perspectives add richness to the reader's understanding of Inda.
The book is basically divided into two periods - Inda at school and Inda banished to the sea. Throughout the book, I found myself continually surprised to be reminded how young Inda is. The book reads like an adult book, but the plot in many ways echoes the common theme of a young adolescent away at school learning to deal with others of his age, or older, without the protection or structure of family. Learning skills, winning allies, making friends and enemies. Smith moves the story to a more adult level by reflecting the perspectives of both adults and other adolescents throughout the kingdom she has created, and allowing this to be the story of more than Inda. The political maneuvering and agendas reminded me more of George Martin. Personally, I find multiple points of view can be distracting and irritating, especially when told from the view of "the bad guy", or unsympathetic characters. But Smith's writing usually compensates, and she uses the multiple viewpoints to general good effect. Inda at sea is gripping and fun, but here is where I especially had a hard time remembering that he was only supposed to be 12, or 14 (or whatever his age was at the particualr spot I was reading.) He comes across as much older, and the other characters respond to him as an older person.
Overall, an excellent read. The only other issue I had was the names - very hard to remember the various proper names, nicknames, surnames, titles, who was who by which name or title and how they all related. Kind of felt like reading one of the old Russian classics. Needed an index in the front or back, so you could cross reference.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A complex, absorbing, entertaining fantasy, September 19, 2006
Inda is quite a bit different from what I expected--it is not the "comfort reading" that Crown Duel is for me. This is a much more complicated (and more adult) story, told in omniscient POV and spanning many years, and set in a harsh society where physical abuse of younger brothers by elder brothers is a thoroughly accepted component of education and training for adult responsibilities. Smith's worldbuilding, however, is so complete that although my sheltered sensibilities would normally recoil from this kind of endemic violence, it is understandable within the context of the story, and we readers are able to empathize with the characters' attitudes toward this and other aspects of their world. And the characters are wonderful: Inda, with his kindheartedness and inborn genius for military strategy; Sponge, the scholarly young prince of whom no one expects much; Hadand, the future wife of the crown prince, pursuing secret studies in magic; Tau, the beautiful pleasure-house boy who becomes a mercenary sailor; Tanrid, Inda's honorable, conscientious, tough-minded brother.... There are villains here, too, driven by lust or greed or jealousy, or simply by their own ideas of what is good for the kingdom; there are no hard and fast moral lines, and sympathetic characters are sometimes misguided, sometimes make tragic mistakes.
There are many intriguing aspects to Inda's militaristic society; I am particularly fascinated by the gender roles. Noble boys and girls both receive military training, but the girls' is focused on castle defense, while the boys' emphasizes offensive tactics, equestrian skills, and the like, for they will be the ones to ride out to war. Boys and girls, men and women mix very freely in this society (ships are crewed by both genders, for example), but there is still an invisible wall separating them and, at least among the nobles, there seems to be a perception that women and men inhabit rather different worlds. And as some of the men are beginning to realize, the women have many secrets.
Readers who have difficulty with a lot of made-up words and names are likely to find Inda slow going at first (there is a glossary at the back of the book, though), and the complexities of the plot require some attentive reading, but the effort is well worth it. This world is fascinating, and the characters so thoroughly engaging that I find myself wondering about them throughout the day. I've stayed up way too late a few nights because I couldn't bear not to find out what happened next to Inda and the rest! Even so, I'm a slow reader, so I haven't quite finished Inda yet, but I expect to tonight. I know I'm going to be left with that peculiar feeling of loss one gets after finishing a book that has completely involved one in its imaginative world.
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41 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ms. Smith Does Know This World Too Well , September 23, 2006
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...
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