The Anvil of the World by Kage Baker
350 pages
Published 2003
Read from August 23 to August 25
Rating: ★★ out of 5
What a disappointment. Some spoilers ahead.
For the first one hundred pages, I loved this book. It was a fast, wonderfully entertaining read, with an interesting world and appealing characters deftly sketched. I couldn't wait to see where this engrossing adventure would lead. But right around the hundred page mark, lots of things happened: the main character's mysterious past turned out to be a huge yawn (a fantasy novel assassin, boooooooring), the engrossing adventure ended abruptly, and I learned this book was a trilogy of loosely connected but mostly independent novellas, not a big story that was going anywhere in particular. And so the entire book just fell apart. What really sank it for me was the abrupt tonal shift with the end of the first novella. In retrospect the breezy and fun adventure of the first hundred pages exhibited some warning signs -- the repeated and ineffectual assassination attempts and perfectly flung throwing knives were getting a bit silly and tiresome and genre-aware by the third repetition. But once the characters all settled down and opened a restaurant together, it got way too fucking Piers Anthony for my tastes. Baker adopted Anthony's insipid "Aren't we just so clever and naughty, kids?" tone wholesale. In the second novella, "I know you are but what am I?" is an arcane magical formula of tremendous power, for fuck's sake. After I read that, only sunk cost fallacy kept me going to the end.
Promising beginning squandered on stupid silly precious frolics. Baker can definitely write when she isn't wasting her time with that Piers Anthony pablum, but even that just led to tonal whiplash. Genocide and broad juvenile "We sure are in a fantasy novel!" chuckleheadedness just don't mix well. Don't try it.
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