The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
May. 22nd, 2014 03:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
”Dear you. The body you are wearing used to be mine.”
A woman awakens in a London park, dripping wet and surrounded by corpses wearing latex gloves. In her pocket is a letter from her previous self: Rook Thomas, a superpowered operative in Britain’s most secret of secret agencies.
And then someone tries to kill her. Again.
When a woman wakes up in a London park surrounded by corpses wearing latex gloves she hasn’t got a clue who she is or what’s going on. Thanks to a letter in her coat pocket, she discovers that her name is Myfanwy Thomas and she’s a senior member of a secret paranormal organisation called the Checquy which is designed to protect Britain from supernatural attacks. Oh, and she’s also able to affect the workings of another person’s body with just her thoughts.
Myfanwy discovers that her old self suspected that there was a traitor in the Court (the governing body of the Chequy) and left herself a series of letters to deal with this amnesia. Not only must Myfanwy try to pick up the pieces of her old life without anyone suspecting what’s happened, but she must also identify the traitor before he or she tries to kill her again.
Daniel O’Malley’s debut fantasy novel is an enjoyable albeit flawed story that reads as SPOOKS meets HARRY DRESDEN. The use of Myfanwy’s letters is a neat way of getting across a lot of complicated backstory and world building while also emphasising the personality changes. Myfanwy’s a likeable character – resourceful and possessing the confidence she’d previously lacked – she’s determined to do a job she finds she actually enjoyed and I liked her growing friendship with her PA Ingrid and Shantay (a Bishop in the Checquy’s US counterpart organisation). However, there are a number of issues with the writing – e.g. the story’s slow to start and it took me a while to get used to the letters from Myfanwy’s past self, and the large cast of characters made it difficult to keep track of who was who on the Court and what they could do, O’Malley uses a number of phrases that aren’t British (which threw me out of the text) and he’s clearly unfamiliar with what a pelvic exam entails and the effects of the same. At times the story threatens to fly apart at the seams and there are a number of areas where Myfanwy veers dangerously close to ‘with one leap our heroine was free’. For all that though, I did find myself enjoying this book – there are some smart one-liners and there’s a lot of potential with the story and O’Malley sets up an interesting overall arc. For those reasons, I will definitely check out the sequel.
The Verdict:
Daniel O’Malley’s debut fantasy novel is an enjoyable albeit flawed story that reads as SPOOKS meets HARRY DRESDEN. The use of Myfanwy’s letters is a neat way of getting across a lot of complicated backstory and world building while also emphasising the personality changes. Myfanwy’s a likeable character – resourceful and possessing the confidence she’d previously lacked – she’s determined to do a job she finds she actually enjoyed and I liked her growing friendship with her PA Ingrid and Shantay (a Bishop in the Checquy’s US counterpart organisation). However, there are a number of issues with the writing – e.g. the story’s slow to start and it took me a while to get used to the letters from Myfanwy’s past self, and the large cast of characters made it difficult to keep track of who was who on the Court and what they could do, O’Malley uses a number of phrases that aren’t British (which threw me out of the text) and he’s clearly unfamiliar with what a pelvic exam entails and the effects of the same. At times the story threatens to fly apart at the seams and there are a number of areas where Myfanwy veers dangerously close to ‘with one leap our heroine was free’. For all that though, I did find myself enjoying this book – there are some smart one-liners and there’s a lot of potential with the story and O’Malley sets up an interesting overall arc. For those reasons, I will definitely check out the sequel.
A woman awakens in a London park, dripping wet and surrounded by corpses wearing latex gloves. In her pocket is a letter from her previous self: Rook Thomas, a superpowered operative in Britain’s most secret of secret agencies.
And then someone tries to kill her. Again.
When a woman wakes up in a London park surrounded by corpses wearing latex gloves she hasn’t got a clue who she is or what’s going on. Thanks to a letter in her coat pocket, she discovers that her name is Myfanwy Thomas and she’s a senior member of a secret paranormal organisation called the Checquy which is designed to protect Britain from supernatural attacks. Oh, and she’s also able to affect the workings of another person’s body with just her thoughts.
Myfanwy discovers that her old self suspected that there was a traitor in the Court (the governing body of the Chequy) and left herself a series of letters to deal with this amnesia. Not only must Myfanwy try to pick up the pieces of her old life without anyone suspecting what’s happened, but she must also identify the traitor before he or she tries to kill her again.
Daniel O’Malley’s debut fantasy novel is an enjoyable albeit flawed story that reads as SPOOKS meets HARRY DRESDEN. The use of Myfanwy’s letters is a neat way of getting across a lot of complicated backstory and world building while also emphasising the personality changes. Myfanwy’s a likeable character – resourceful and possessing the confidence she’d previously lacked – she’s determined to do a job she finds she actually enjoyed and I liked her growing friendship with her PA Ingrid and Shantay (a Bishop in the Checquy’s US counterpart organisation). However, there are a number of issues with the writing – e.g. the story’s slow to start and it took me a while to get used to the letters from Myfanwy’s past self, and the large cast of characters made it difficult to keep track of who was who on the Court and what they could do, O’Malley uses a number of phrases that aren’t British (which threw me out of the text) and he’s clearly unfamiliar with what a pelvic exam entails and the effects of the same. At times the story threatens to fly apart at the seams and there are a number of areas where Myfanwy veers dangerously close to ‘with one leap our heroine was free’. For all that though, I did find myself enjoying this book – there are some smart one-liners and there’s a lot of potential with the story and O’Malley sets up an interesting overall arc. For those reasons, I will definitely check out the sequel.
The Verdict:
Daniel O’Malley’s debut fantasy novel is an enjoyable albeit flawed story that reads as SPOOKS meets HARRY DRESDEN. The use of Myfanwy’s letters is a neat way of getting across a lot of complicated backstory and world building while also emphasising the personality changes. Myfanwy’s a likeable character – resourceful and possessing the confidence she’d previously lacked – she’s determined to do a job she finds she actually enjoyed and I liked her growing friendship with her PA Ingrid and Shantay (a Bishop in the Checquy’s US counterpart organisation). However, there are a number of issues with the writing – e.g. the story’s slow to start and it took me a while to get used to the letters from Myfanwy’s past self, and the large cast of characters made it difficult to keep track of who was who on the Court and what they could do, O’Malley uses a number of phrases that aren’t British (which threw me out of the text) and he’s clearly unfamiliar with what a pelvic exam entails and the effects of the same. At times the story threatens to fly apart at the seams and there are a number of areas where Myfanwy veers dangerously close to ‘with one leap our heroine was free’. For all that though, I did find myself enjoying this book – there are some smart one-liners and there’s a lot of potential with the story and O’Malley sets up an interesting overall arc. For those reasons, I will definitely check out the sequel.
