2013 read #77: Prospero Lost by L. Jagi Lamplighter.

Prospero Lost by L. Jagi Lamplighter
347 pages
Published 2009
Read from June 12 to June 16
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5

Embarrassing confession time: I haven't read The Tempest. I've read shamefully little Shakespeare, period. (*cough* I've only read Hamlet. *cough*) I've absorbed enough of The Tempest through its influence on modern sci-fi and fantasy novels that I would say it's probably my favorite work I've never read. A series like this is pretty damn irresistible to me, then. No matter how good or bad this first volume is, I am finishing this trilogy.

The bad news: Prospero Lost is poorly written, couched in pretty much bog standard fantasy prose -- tolerable enough for me to keep reading, bad enough for me to get impatient with it now and again. It's also structured poorly. There is no rising action or climax; or rather, it climaxes early and then coasts down through repeated restatements of the unsolved mysteries at the center of the plot, draining away any residual tension. It's quite obvious Lamplighter was contracted to write a trilogy, without any of the token first book resolution you often see in genre trilogies; this first volume exists mostly to set up whatever follows. Which is frustrating when you're reading the final fifty pages, expecting a major climax, and instead the main heroes just chill with Santa Claus at the North Pole (no joke), sipping hot cocoa and relaxing in a sauna.

The good news: Prospero Lost is tremendously entertaining. I mean, for goodness sake, it ends with the main heroes just chilling with Santa Claus at the North Pole, sipping hot cocoa and relaxing in a sauna. Before that point, a wind spirit invokes the human elemental spirits of Copernicus (air), Lavoisier (water), Newton (earth), and Oppenheimer (fire), and there are other clever touches like that, comparing favorably to Gaiman. This book was, if I may say so, a romp, despite its more boring stretches. I'm pumped to take up the next book in the series, so overall I'd say we have a success.

So far.