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The Fall of Ile-Rien #1
The Wizard Hunters
Once a fertile and prosperous land, Ile-Rien is under attack by the Gardier, a mysterious army whose storm-black airships appear from nowhere to strike without warning. Every weapon in the arsenal of Ile-Rien's revered wizards has proven useless.
And now the last hope of a magical realm under siege rests within a child's plaything.
And now the last hope of a magical realm under siege rests within a child's plaything.
464 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 13, 2003
About the author
Martha Wells
93 books20.3k followersMartha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, the Ile-Rien series, The Murderbot Diaries series, and other fantasy novels, most recently Witch King (Tordotcom, 2023). She has also written media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, Locus Awards, and a Dragon Award, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the British Science Fiction Association Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, the Sunday Times Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her books have been published in twenty-five languages.
She is also a consulting producer on The Murderbot Diaries series for Apple TV+.
She is also a consulting producer on The Murderbot Diaries series for Apple TV+.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 270 reviews
November 28, 2017
Those who read The Death of the Necromancer (related to this book, but not requisite for understanding it) will remember Vien as an urbane, prosperous city at the height of its power. From a cultural capital and political powerhouse, it has transformed in the space of only a few years as a mysterious and apparently unstoppable enemy reduces the city to ruins and its inhabitants to refugees.
Before the war, Tremaine was a successful playwright with a circle of entertaining arty friends. Now she volunteers for the dangerous work of driving ambulances and goes home alone to her missing father's rambling old house of Coldcourt. To help the dismal war effort, her family has donated both money and their collection of magical spheres to a research group trying to find a way to circumvent the enemy's immunity to magic. One night one of the wizard researchers, a family friend, comes to ask Tremaine if she has any additional spheres. Little does she know that her decision to accompany Gerard to the Institute will send her into danger and across dimensions...
Before the war, Tremaine was a successful playwright with a circle of entertaining arty friends. Now she volunteers for the dangerous work of driving ambulances and goes home alone to her missing father's rambling old house of Coldcourt. To help the dismal war effort, her family has donated both money and their collection of magical spheres to a research group trying to find a way to circumvent the enemy's immunity to magic. One night one of the wizard researchers, a family friend, comes to ask Tremaine if she has any additional spheres. Little does she know that her decision to accompany Gerard to the Institute will send her into danger and across dimensions...
March 26, 2013
Okay the first thing to know is: If you’re starting THE WIZARD HUNTERS and you’re not sure you like it? Read at least three or four chapters before you decide.
The Characters:
We have a third-person divided pov structure, Tremaine in a world with the flavor of, say, mid-1800s England; and Ilias in a very different world that doesn’t map terribly well onto any real historical era I can think of but is much less technologically advanced. It’s important that you wait for the two plotlines to converge before you decide whether you like the characters or the story, because I just about guarantee you will once the plotlines come together. Which they do very early on, so there’s actually not much patience required. And after that, the books really take off!
Tremaine is my favorite character EVER! She is right up there with my other favorite-ever characters, like Miles Vorkosigan and Vlad Taltos and Eugenides. She is prickly, sarcastic, ruthlessly practical, sometimes insecure, occasionally suicidal, and doesn’t have a romantic bone in her body. I mean, there is romance — but it starts late in the series and it is never, but never, a gushy obsessive romance.
There’re lots of secondary characters from Tremaine’s world — of the ones we see from the start, Gerard is possibly my favorite of them because I have a thing for dedicated do-the-job types. I love Florian, too, though. I kept rather hoping Ander would get shot or fall off a cliff or at least see the error of his ways and start taking Tremaine seriously, but, sigh, I guess there really are jackasses like that in the world and he does provide a certain something. Like, a contrast to Ilias, for one thing.
Because Ilias! Tremaine is my favorite, but Ilias is also great. He’s like the Muscle-Bound Barbarian Warrior, only for grownups: complex and believable, fascinating backstory, highly competent but plausibly so. I love his relationship with his friend and foster-brother, Giliead. And I love the way their society is so different from Tremaine’s and how those differences echo through the whole story.
You are probably getting the idea that there are a lot of characters. This is true, and more as time goes on, but Wells handles them all extremely well, and gives them all time off as appropriate rather than trying to clutter up every scene with the whole bunch of ‘em, and so it’s easy to keep track of everyone. Particularly since everyone is distinctive. Mostly Wells sticks with Tremaine and Ilias as the pov protagonists; as we go on through the trilogy we do get little sections from other points of view, but this is beautifully handled and never obtrusive or annoying; there’s none of that dilution of pov you get in some modern epic fantasy until you can’t tell who the blazes the main character is supposed to be.
The world:
Oh, it’s so much fun! I’m actually not always in the mood for a gaslamp fantasy setting, so gating from Tremaine’s world into Ilias’ and back mixed the settings up and kept everything feeling exciting. Those gates! New corners to peek around just everywhere, and this is Martha Wells, right? So you know the scenery is going to be grand-scale and stunning. Ruined cities everywhere, and all of them different. But the ruined cities aren’t the only thing on a grand scale: check out the Revenna. One of my favorite lines from the first book was something like: “So, we’re going to make our secret escape on the biggest ship in the world.” (And they do.) I thought the ship was modeled on maybe the Queen E, and I was almost right — Wells has an author’s note that says she actually based the ship on the Queen Mary.
I love Tremaine’s world — like a gaslamp fantasy, right? But with fey that seriously affected things until cold iron became more common. My favorite exchange in the third book, one of the few times we actually see a fey, it says to Tremaine: “You look tasty, little girl.” And she levels a gun at it and says, “So do you.” (The fey is in fact more intimidated by Tremaine than the other way around.)
I love Ilias’ world more. We get to see a good bit of it, but Ilias’ home town is my favorite. The customs are so different and the interaction between the characters is really enhanced by this. I don’t want to be too specific. Just take it as read that every scene is beautifully set, okay?
The plot:
The overarching plot is complex, but it hangs together just fine. It’s an invasion story — as suggested by the title of the trilogy, right? — and of course the plot is concerned with taking back Ile-Rien from its conquerers. The conquerers are . . . really interesting. Almost anything I say about them would be too much, so silence seems the best policy here.
The first book is really pretty well self contained, which is handy if you want to give the trilogy a try without committing to all three books, but the second definitely feeds right into the third. The romance could not be more removed from the simplistic insta-romances we see everywhere today and that for me are such a turn-off. Wells handles her romance with subtlety and humor and lets her people be complicated and conflicted. But not in an annoying way! Not that kind of conflicted!
There was some political idiocy in the third book, which was painful to read. I mean, don’t we get enough political indiocy in the real world? Thankfully the scenes where we have to endure moronic self-serving politicians working hard to seize defeat from the jaws of victory are quite brief. And I hope you don’t mind if I just say that the worst of the lot gets what’s coming to him. Too bad we can’t deflect nasty curses onto deserving politicians in the real world!
The overall plot is impressively coherent, all the complicated problems on three different worlds arising from one basic source. The tiny little deus ex moments here and there are actually fitting and believable.
Overall:
This is a great trilogy. It's definitely a keeper; I know I'll be reading this one again.
The Characters:
We have a third-person divided pov structure, Tremaine in a world with the flavor of, say, mid-1800s England; and Ilias in a very different world that doesn’t map terribly well onto any real historical era I can think of but is much less technologically advanced. It’s important that you wait for the two plotlines to converge before you decide whether you like the characters or the story, because I just about guarantee you will once the plotlines come together. Which they do very early on, so there’s actually not much patience required. And after that, the books really take off!
Tremaine is my favorite character EVER! She is right up there with my other favorite-ever characters, like Miles Vorkosigan and Vlad Taltos and Eugenides. She is prickly, sarcastic, ruthlessly practical, sometimes insecure, occasionally suicidal, and doesn’t have a romantic bone in her body. I mean, there is romance — but it starts late in the series and it is never, but never, a gushy obsessive romance.
There’re lots of secondary characters from Tremaine’s world — of the ones we see from the start, Gerard is possibly my favorite of them because I have a thing for dedicated do-the-job types. I love Florian, too, though. I kept rather hoping Ander would get shot or fall off a cliff or at least see the error of his ways and start taking Tremaine seriously, but, sigh, I guess there really are jackasses like that in the world and he does provide a certain something. Like, a contrast to Ilias, for one thing.
Because Ilias! Tremaine is my favorite, but Ilias is also great. He’s like the Muscle-Bound Barbarian Warrior, only for grownups: complex and believable, fascinating backstory, highly competent but plausibly so. I love his relationship with his friend and foster-brother, Giliead. And I love the way their society is so different from Tremaine’s and how those differences echo through the whole story.
You are probably getting the idea that there are a lot of characters. This is true, and more as time goes on, but Wells handles them all extremely well, and gives them all time off as appropriate rather than trying to clutter up every scene with the whole bunch of ‘em, and so it’s easy to keep track of everyone. Particularly since everyone is distinctive. Mostly Wells sticks with Tremaine and Ilias as the pov protagonists; as we go on through the trilogy we do get little sections from other points of view, but this is beautifully handled and never obtrusive or annoying; there’s none of that dilution of pov you get in some modern epic fantasy until you can’t tell who the blazes the main character is supposed to be.
The world:
Oh, it’s so much fun! I’m actually not always in the mood for a gaslamp fantasy setting, so gating from Tremaine’s world into Ilias’ and back mixed the settings up and kept everything feeling exciting. Those gates! New corners to peek around just everywhere, and this is Martha Wells, right? So you know the scenery is going to be grand-scale and stunning. Ruined cities everywhere, and all of them different. But the ruined cities aren’t the only thing on a grand scale: check out the Revenna. One of my favorite lines from the first book was something like: “So, we’re going to make our secret escape on the biggest ship in the world.” (And they do.) I thought the ship was modeled on maybe the Queen E, and I was almost right — Wells has an author’s note that says she actually based the ship on the Queen Mary.
I love Tremaine’s world — like a gaslamp fantasy, right? But with fey that seriously affected things until cold iron became more common. My favorite exchange in the third book, one of the few times we actually see a fey, it says to Tremaine: “You look tasty, little girl.” And she levels a gun at it and says, “So do you.” (The fey is in fact more intimidated by Tremaine than the other way around.)
I love Ilias’ world more. We get to see a good bit of it, but Ilias’ home town is my favorite. The customs are so different and the interaction between the characters is really enhanced by this. I don’t want to be too specific. Just take it as read that every scene is beautifully set, okay?
The plot:
The overarching plot is complex, but it hangs together just fine. It’s an invasion story — as suggested by the title of the trilogy, right? — and of course the plot is concerned with taking back Ile-Rien from its conquerers. The conquerers are . . . really interesting. Almost anything I say about them would be too much, so silence seems the best policy here.
The first book is really pretty well self contained, which is handy if you want to give the trilogy a try without committing to all three books, but the second definitely feeds right into the third. The romance could not be more removed from the simplistic insta-romances we see everywhere today and that for me are such a turn-off. Wells handles her romance with subtlety and humor and lets her people be complicated and conflicted. But not in an annoying way! Not that kind of conflicted!
There was some political idiocy in the third book, which was painful to read. I mean, don’t we get enough political indiocy in the real world? Thankfully the scenes where we have to endure moronic self-serving politicians working hard to seize defeat from the jaws of victory are quite brief. And I hope you don’t mind if I just say that the worst of the lot gets what’s coming to him. Too bad we can’t deflect nasty curses onto deserving politicians in the real world!
The overall plot is impressively coherent, all the complicated problems on three different worlds arising from one basic source. The tiny little deus ex moments here and there are actually fitting and believable.
Overall:
This is a great trilogy. It's definitely a keeper; I know I'll be reading this one again.
July 13, 2014
Warning: slight spoilers below. But stuff I’d have wanted to know.
An obscure epic fantasy that came highly recommended (by Kate Elliott, for instance. I like her books and the way she talks about books, particularly the social consciousness with which she reads, but I have to stop taking her fantasy recs. They’ve ranged from so-so at best – Daggerspell, Banner of the Damned – to unreadable at worst – Irons in the Fire, bleh). But in the end this bored me so much I took nearly a month to finish it, a bad sign for an adventure fantasy book of under 400 pages.
Wells must have heavily workshopped the first sentence – for that matter, the first chapter – because this book started off very well, only to disappoint within the first hundred pages. Here’s the opening line:
“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.”
Who could read that and not want to know more about Tremaine, and what has brought her to this point? Not me. Too bad the characterization turns out to be so flat. Tremaine is supposed to be suicidally depressed, but she doesn’t come across as suffering from depression at all, more like a morbid smart-aleck, and once her suicidal inclinations have served their plot function (getting her into a dangerous adventure), they soon disappear, only to be ultimately explained away by magic. I am not sure why Wells felt an external force was needed to “explain” why Tremaine was hit harder by events than others; why isn’t it enough that she’s a different individual, one more prone to depression?
Not that there’s a whole lot of individuality to anyone in this book. Even many of the most important secondary characters, like Florian and Gerard, can be easily summed up as “nice people, who do magic” – more plot function than personality. And the minor characters? Forget about it. I still can’t tell you who that guy Niles was, though apparently he had some importance. And I regularly read books far more populated than this; I keep track of characters like it’s my job.
But back to that beginning. When a character worries about a court verdict in the first sentence of a fantasy novel,* I expect a story built around a highly structured society: something like His Majesty's Dragon, or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, or Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw. For the first few chapters that’s what we get, as Wells builds a fascinating fantasy version of London during the Blitz. But all too soon, the leads are dumped on a remote island and spend 100 pages running around tunnels and fighting. That was where it lost me, and by the time we return to the original setting toward the end of the story, I was so bored by these shallow and static characters that I no longer cared. Nor did the worldbuilding turn out as deep as expected; this is more the kind of fantasy where people conk enemies (mysterious evil invaders with no discernible reason for their belligerence, natch) over the head than the kind dealing with social intricacies.
That said, obviously there is an audience for this kind of thing, and the plot isn’t quite as silly as you might expect from some of the blurbs (which make it sound like it’s all about uncovering the secrets of some magical object – there is some of that, but it isn’t overwhelming). It is not as dire as a lot of fantasy out there, and the writing isn’t terrible, so if you are a reader more interested in plot than character, this may be for you. But after this bait-and-switch I won't be reading the sequels, so I'm glad there's at least a bit of resolution here.
* This part of the sentence apparently meant nothing, just another way of saying "trying to find a way to kill herself that would look like natural causes." I hate it when I'm paying more attention to what a writer is saying than the actual writer is.
An obscure epic fantasy that came highly recommended (by Kate Elliott, for instance. I like her books and the way she talks about books, particularly the social consciousness with which she reads, but I have to stop taking her fantasy recs. They’ve ranged from so-so at best – Daggerspell, Banner of the Damned – to unreadable at worst – Irons in the Fire, bleh). But in the end this bored me so much I took nearly a month to finish it, a bad sign for an adventure fantasy book of under 400 pages.
Wells must have heavily workshopped the first sentence – for that matter, the first chapter – because this book started off very well, only to disappoint within the first hundred pages. Here’s the opening line:
“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.”
Who could read that and not want to know more about Tremaine, and what has brought her to this point? Not me. Too bad the characterization turns out to be so flat. Tremaine is supposed to be suicidally depressed, but she doesn’t come across as suffering from depression at all, more like a morbid smart-aleck, and once her suicidal inclinations have served their plot function (getting her into a dangerous adventure), they soon disappear, only to be ultimately explained away by magic. I am not sure why Wells felt an external force was needed to “explain” why Tremaine was hit harder by events than others; why isn’t it enough that she’s a different individual, one more prone to depression?
Not that there’s a whole lot of individuality to anyone in this book. Even many of the most important secondary characters, like Florian and Gerard, can be easily summed up as “nice people, who do magic” – more plot function than personality. And the minor characters? Forget about it. I still can’t tell you who that guy Niles was, though apparently he had some importance. And I regularly read books far more populated than this; I keep track of characters like it’s my job.
But back to that beginning. When a character worries about a court verdict in the first sentence of a fantasy novel,* I expect a story built around a highly structured society: something like His Majesty's Dragon, or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, or Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw. For the first few chapters that’s what we get, as Wells builds a fascinating fantasy version of London during the Blitz. But all too soon, the leads are dumped on a remote island and spend 100 pages running around tunnels and fighting. That was where it lost me, and by the time we return to the original setting toward the end of the story, I was so bored by these shallow and static characters that I no longer cared. Nor did the worldbuilding turn out as deep as expected; this is more the kind of fantasy where people conk enemies (mysterious evil invaders with no discernible reason for their belligerence, natch) over the head than the kind dealing with social intricacies.
That said, obviously there is an audience for this kind of thing, and the plot isn’t quite as silly as you might expect from some of the blurbs (which make it sound like it’s all about uncovering the secrets of some magical object – there is some of that, but it isn’t overwhelming). It is not as dire as a lot of fantasy out there, and the writing isn’t terrible, so if you are a reader more interested in plot than character, this may be for you. But after this bait-and-switch I won't be reading the sequels, so I'm glad there's at least a bit of resolution here.
* This part of the sentence apparently meant nothing, just another way of saying "trying to find a way to kill herself that would look like natural causes." I hate it when I'm paying more attention to what a writer is saying than the actual writer is.
January 7, 2019
Initially picked up because of the Bingo challenge, I hoped this would be a good fit for a difficult square. And while the world is interesting, I found the The Wizard Hunters boring almost to the point of DNFing it. I have no idea why I persisted.
The book is initially split into two storylines. In the first, Tremaine, a playwright, is contacted by a group of sorcerers because she possesses the last magical sphere that could help Ile-Rien in the war against Gardier, a nation of people who attacked suddenly and with seemingly no reason. The sphere doesn't work without her presence, so she's dragged along on a dangerous adventure. Then we also follow Illias and Giliead as they explore a cave occupied by evil wizards. The storylines eventually converge, though the beginning was quite confusing - I felt like I was missing out on a lot of context.
The worldbuilding is where it should have shined. I haven't seen a secondary-world book that combined electricity and magic before, or one that would contain contact between two civilisations on very different technological levels. And I love books about culture clashes. By all means, it should have worked.
Unfortunately, it's a colossal yawner regardless. It's quite hard to put a finger on why, too. The prose is of the unremarkable windowpane kind (could not find a single quote), but this alone shouldn't have been so bad. I think the biggest problems are that I couldn't connect to any of the characters - they all seem quite bland and two-dimensional. The book tells us that Tremaine is suicidal, but it doesn't really show her mental health issues or discuss them much - and what's worse, . And the Gardier come off as the standard evil-for-the-sake-of-evil. The plot...well. I found the sphere a bit of a convenient deus-ex-machina at points, and most plot twists predictable. It definitely doesn't reinvent the wheel.
It's really not a bad book. It doesn't have many glaring flaws. But it didn't have many virtues either, and definitely nothing that would make me excited about reading on - the above paragraph feels like justifications for the simple facts that I was bored, and it was a chore to read. Aggressively mediocre, I suppose, is the term. Anyway, I'm unlikely to continue the series.
Enjoyment: 2/5
Execution: 3/5
Recommended to: if the combination of tech and magic sounds interesting to you...maybe?
Not recommended to: most people
More reviews on my blog, To Other Worlds.
The book is initially split into two storylines. In the first, Tremaine, a playwright, is contacted by a group of sorcerers because she possesses the last magical sphere that could help Ile-Rien in the war against Gardier, a nation of people who attacked suddenly and with seemingly no reason. The sphere doesn't work without her presence, so she's dragged along on a dangerous adventure. Then we also follow Illias and Giliead as they explore a cave occupied by evil wizards. The storylines eventually converge, though the beginning was quite confusing - I felt like I was missing out on a lot of context.
The worldbuilding is where it should have shined. I haven't seen a secondary-world book that combined electricity and magic before, or one that would contain contact between two civilisations on very different technological levels. And I love books about culture clashes. By all means, it should have worked.
Unfortunately, it's a colossal yawner regardless. It's quite hard to put a finger on why, too. The prose is of the unremarkable windowpane kind (could not find a single quote), but this alone shouldn't have been so bad. I think the biggest problems are that I couldn't connect to any of the characters - they all seem quite bland and two-dimensional. The book tells us that Tremaine is suicidal, but it doesn't really show her mental health issues or discuss them much - and what's worse, . And the Gardier come off as the standard evil-for-the-sake-of-evil. The plot...well. I found the sphere a bit of a convenient deus-ex-machina at points, and most plot twists predictable. It definitely doesn't reinvent the wheel.
It's really not a bad book. It doesn't have many glaring flaws. But it didn't have many virtues either, and definitely nothing that would make me excited about reading on - the above paragraph feels like justifications for the simple facts that I was bored, and it was a chore to read. Aggressively mediocre, I suppose, is the term. Anyway, I'm unlikely to continue the series.
Enjoyment: 2/5
Execution: 3/5
Recommended to: if the combination of tech and magic sounds interesting to you...maybe?
Not recommended to: most people
More reviews on my blog, To Other Worlds.
July 14, 2024
Read this for my old book group. I liked it quite a bit at the time, it was an intriguing high fantasy, but now I don't really remember the details much. It's something that I would recommend, though, and that I'd pick up again if was in a mood for high fantasy.
January 20, 2023
While waiting for the next Murderbot adventure, I decided to revisit one of the earlier settings from Martha Wells: the kingdom of Ile-Rien, last seen in “The Element of Fire”. I might have skipped one episode about a necromancer, but the next stop is apparently a winner: for me, not so much for Vienne and its Rienish environs, which are about to fall victim of villainous attacks from a new enemy, called here the Gardier.
The opening of this new series reminds me a little of Luftwaffe attacks against Britain in the first world war, with the Ille-Rien defenders unable to resist the aerial bombardments from Gardier zeppelins and the Rienish wizards unable to penetrate the foreign spell shields. The Gardier are also able to launch their own devastating spells that wreck everything technologically advanced in this steampunk setting.
Enter Tremaine Valiarde, a young society lady with a death wish and a bizarre sense of humour. She is asked by her legal guardian, appointed after the disappearance of her father and uncle in dubious circumstances, to contribute to the war effort. Tremaine must use a family heirloom, a sort of magic ball, in a secret project designed to open portals into a different dimension, a place that is supposedly the launch base for Gardier attacks.
Martha Wells doesn’t beat around the bush much, and the reader is soon enough thrown into a high-octane survival race against impossible odds for Tremaine, her wizard-guardian Gerard and a young apprentice named Florian.
The improvised spies discover a secret Gardier base on an isolated island near an unknown shore, but they are discovered in turn by the soldiers and by numerous monsters created by a local evil sorcerer.
A parallel storyline describes the adventures of a couple of wizard hunters from a local tribe, a much less technologically advanced society build around shamanism and animist deities. Giliead and Ilias join forces with Tremaine and her friends, but their escape from the island unscathed is anything but guaranteed.
>>><<<>>><<<
“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; but whenever we’re about to die, she’s the one who gets all three of us through it alive.”
The first selling point of the series is the incredible lead character, a woman with a complex personality (I almost said multiple personality) that shows courage, intelligence and wit beneath a vulnerable, insecure facade. Trying to pin Tremaine Valiarde down is almost as fun as the intensive action sequences in this first volume.
The second main attraction is the original setting, combining three separate standard fantasy worlds into something more than the sum of its parts: the Rienish industrial revolution set that has modern weaponry, electricity, Victorian social institutions AND magic, with the Gardier mysterious anti-wizard abilities, crystal-driven technology and rigid-totalitarian social system and finally the tribal, undeveloped, mystical Syrnaic people with their taboos and their matriarchy.
The cherry on the cake of this mash-up is the undercurrent of romance between Tremaine and of of the wizard hunters, all the better for being left on the slow boil and rearing its head at the most action intensive moments.
The fact that Martha Wells prefers to go her own way and create something original instead of following trends and fashions in fantasy is what makes me look forward to the next two books in the series. [wink wink: I already finished the second one]
This one, despite the sense of impending doom narrowly escaped a la Indiana Tremaine Jones [in a skirt] is more like an appetizer than the main course.
The effort to turn the tide of battle and save Ile-Rien is just starting.
December 15, 2011
this is actually a review of the trilogy, comprised of the wizard hunters, the ships of air, and the gate of gods. i think that you could probably read the later books without having read previous books and get filled in enough to comprehend what's happening, but don't do that. start at the beginning, even though the first book starts slowly, and enjoy spending time in this place with these people.
ile-rien is the world where several other of wells' books are set, so if you've read her other books (and you should) some things will sound familiar--names of past rulers and such. but those books took place further back in ile-rien's past. we're not quite up to modern days, but electricity and motor cars are present now, in addition to magic. ile-rien is now at war with the gardier, who come from another world, and they are losing the war. we meet tremaine, who has been volunteering in the war effort. the sorcerers of ile-rien are trying to use spheres of a type first created by tremaine's uncle (by title, not by blood) to fight the gardier, and they are running out of spheres and sorcerers to test them. tremaine has an old prototype in the house, doesn't she? it turns out that she does, but it won't activate unless she is in contact with it when a sorcerer tries to do a spell, so she will have to come along to help out.
then the scene shifts to another world. we follow two wizard hunters, ilias and gilead. gilead is the chosen vessel of the local god, given the power to sniff out magic spells, or curses as they are known in that world. there is new wizardly activity in a location where the two of them previously encountered and defeated a wizard, so they are investigating to see if a new wizard has taken over.
point of view shifts from group to group, person to person, world to world. we even sometimes see things from a gardier viewpoint. the spheres give the power to move between the worlds but the gardier have that power too. the two main groups of the rienish sorcerers and the (don't have the book with me but i think the world was called) syprian wizard hunters meet up and discover that they need each other's help, but can the syprians overcome their deep hatred and justified suspicions of magic enough to work with the rienish?
there's a romantic element to the story, too--i enjoyed it but i guess if you can't stand any hint of romance (and i don't mean of the harlequin variety) in your fantasy reading, take note of that. i can't recall most of what happened in which book, only that once it took off, i didn't so much read it as devour it and roll around in the delight of reading something that was so much fun. again, i warn you--it started slow. but once the groups meet up, stuff starts happening so fast that you feel like you will fall out of the chair as you read. there are some lulls, as you travel about on an ocean liner inspired by the queen mary, for example, but you can't trust a lull when a gardier airship can show up in the sky above you at any moment.
ile-rien is the world where several other of wells' books are set, so if you've read her other books (and you should) some things will sound familiar--names of past rulers and such. but those books took place further back in ile-rien's past. we're not quite up to modern days, but electricity and motor cars are present now, in addition to magic. ile-rien is now at war with the gardier, who come from another world, and they are losing the war. we meet tremaine, who has been volunteering in the war effort. the sorcerers of ile-rien are trying to use spheres of a type first created by tremaine's uncle (by title, not by blood) to fight the gardier, and they are running out of spheres and sorcerers to test them. tremaine has an old prototype in the house, doesn't she? it turns out that she does, but it won't activate unless she is in contact with it when a sorcerer tries to do a spell, so she will have to come along to help out.
then the scene shifts to another world. we follow two wizard hunters, ilias and gilead. gilead is the chosen vessel of the local god, given the power to sniff out magic spells, or curses as they are known in that world. there is new wizardly activity in a location where the two of them previously encountered and defeated a wizard, so they are investigating to see if a new wizard has taken over.
point of view shifts from group to group, person to person, world to world. we even sometimes see things from a gardier viewpoint. the spheres give the power to move between the worlds but the gardier have that power too. the two main groups of the rienish sorcerers and the (don't have the book with me but i think the world was called) syprian wizard hunters meet up and discover that they need each other's help, but can the syprians overcome their deep hatred and justified suspicions of magic enough to work with the rienish?
there's a romantic element to the story, too--i enjoyed it but i guess if you can't stand any hint of romance (and i don't mean of the harlequin variety) in your fantasy reading, take note of that. i can't recall most of what happened in which book, only that once it took off, i didn't so much read it as devour it and roll around in the delight of reading something that was so much fun. again, i warn you--it started slow. but once the groups meet up, stuff starts happening so fast that you feel like you will fall out of the chair as you read. there are some lulls, as you travel about on an ocean liner inspired by the queen mary, for example, but you can't trust a lull when a gardier airship can show up in the sky above you at any moment.
July 17, 2024
Stars: 4.5 out of 5.
I loved this book! But then again, I have loved everything Martha Wells wrote so far, especially the Murderbot series. So let's narrow this down and say that this is the book I loved the most in the Ile-Rien series.
The Element of Fire and the Death of the Necromancer were okay, but I hadn't been particularly excited for the world or the characters. This book changed all that. From the very first chapters, I was intrigued, I was puzzled, but I was also getting more and more attached to the characters. And I was full blown hooked when the two storylines merged after Tremaine and Co went through the portal.
I think the characters are what makes this book so immensely readable. They are flawed, but they are "alive" and they are interesting. And there are so many good ones that it's hard to say who was my favorite. I loved Tremaine and her identity crisis. Even her suicidal tendencies are explained by the end of the book (and what a sad and tragic explanation). I loved Ilias and Giliead, our wizard hunting brothers, and I especially loved Gerard, the scholarly wizard and friend of Tremaine's father. But even the side characters feel like real people, whether you like them or loath them.
It was also interesting to return to Ile-Rien after the events of the second book and follow Tremaine, who is the daughter of the protagonists in The Death of the Necromancer. Something tells me that the events of that book will have consequences in the rest of the series. It's not coincidence that the enemies Tremaine faces now are called Gardier. Also, where is Nicholas Valiarde? A man with his talents is very hard to kill, so I'm sure we will encounter him in future books of the series. And I really hope that Ile-Rien isn't lost. That Tremaine and her friends will be able to rebuild this mighty city after they have defeated the Gardier.
The new world they are dumped into is also very interesting, with its own distinct culture and customs, so I had fun exploring it as well. And I hope we get to do more exploration in the next books. And I still really want to know where the Gardier come from and how such a civilization came to be. Also, what is their end goal? World(s) domination for the sake of it? Expansion for expansion sake? It's unclear.
Either way, I have two more books to look forward to, and I will definitely be along for the ride.
I loved this book! But then again, I have loved everything Martha Wells wrote so far, especially the Murderbot series. So let's narrow this down and say that this is the book I loved the most in the Ile-Rien series.
The Element of Fire and the Death of the Necromancer were okay, but I hadn't been particularly excited for the world or the characters. This book changed all that. From the very first chapters, I was intrigued, I was puzzled, but I was also getting more and more attached to the characters. And I was full blown hooked when the two storylines merged after Tremaine and Co went through the portal.
I think the characters are what makes this book so immensely readable. They are flawed, but they are "alive" and they are interesting. And there are so many good ones that it's hard to say who was my favorite. I loved Tremaine and her identity crisis. Even her suicidal tendencies are explained by the end of the book (and what a sad and tragic explanation). I loved Ilias and Giliead, our wizard hunting brothers, and I especially loved Gerard, the scholarly wizard and friend of Tremaine's father. But even the side characters feel like real people, whether you like them or loath them.
It was also interesting to return to Ile-Rien after the events of the second book and follow Tremaine, who is the daughter of the protagonists in The Death of the Necromancer. Something tells me that the events of that book will have consequences in the rest of the series. It's not coincidence that the enemies Tremaine faces now are called Gardier. Also, where is Nicholas Valiarde? A man with his talents is very hard to kill, so I'm sure we will encounter him in future books of the series. And I really hope that Ile-Rien isn't lost. That Tremaine and her friends will be able to rebuild this mighty city after they have defeated the Gardier.
The new world they are dumped into is also very interesting, with its own distinct culture and customs, so I had fun exploring it as well. And I hope we get to do more exploration in the next books. And I still really want to know where the Gardier come from and how such a civilization came to be. Also, what is their end goal? World(s) domination for the sake of it? Expansion for expansion sake? It's unclear.
Either way, I have two more books to look forward to, and I will definitely be along for the ride.
November 16, 2016
Martha Wells is one of my favorite writers. Her ability to create entire new worlds and, in particular, beings and societies, is amazing. She's very detailed and always displays great imagination. That being said, this trilogy was the first time I had trouble finishing one of her books.
Minor plot description: We've got Ile-Rien, a world technologically set in about the 1930s, except without airplanes or cannons. They also have magic. They are in a war with a mysterious race called the Gardier who is kicking their butt in a major way. Nothing is known about them. Eventually, Ile-Rien wizards manage to cross over into a different world, Cineth. Cineth is technologically backwards and the only magic there is performed by wizards who are both evil and mad. That should be enough to give you the flavor of the thing.
As to how it works, Ile-Rien is a much more boring place than the Ile-Rien of, say, The Element of Fire, with its Fey and its strangeness. The modern Ile-Rien is a pretty standard place with few surprises, so Wells' abilities are wasted here. The Gardier, well... nothing is known about them. You can't beat that for boring and it was one of the most frustrating things I ran into with these books.
The only reason I managed to actually finish the trilogy is Cineth. That's standard Wells' goodness. The characters, the idiosyncrasies, the laws, everything here is rich and absorbing. And not less the plight of their people in their struggle against the evil wizard Ixion. The labyrinthine Ile-Rien ship, the Ravenna, also provides a tremendous setting for this part of the plot to continue to play out.
The biggest trouble, of course, is that is is only the secondary plot. The primary was such a burden to get on with that I would only recommend this book to hardcore Wells' fans.
Minor plot description: We've got Ile-Rien, a world technologically set in about the 1930s, except without airplanes or cannons. They also have magic. They are in a war with a mysterious race called the Gardier who is kicking their butt in a major way. Nothing is known about them. Eventually, Ile-Rien wizards manage to cross over into a different world, Cineth. Cineth is technologically backwards and the only magic there is performed by wizards who are both evil and mad. That should be enough to give you the flavor of the thing.
As to how it works, Ile-Rien is a much more boring place than the Ile-Rien of, say, The Element of Fire, with its Fey and its strangeness. The modern Ile-Rien is a pretty standard place with few surprises, so Wells' abilities are wasted here. The Gardier, well... nothing is known about them. You can't beat that for boring and it was one of the most frustrating things I ran into with these books.
The only reason I managed to actually finish the trilogy is Cineth. That's standard Wells' goodness. The characters, the idiosyncrasies, the laws, everything here is rich and absorbing. And not less the plight of their people in their struggle against the evil wizard Ixion. The labyrinthine Ile-Rien ship, the Ravenna, also provides a tremendous setting for this part of the plot to continue to play out.
The biggest trouble, of course, is that is is only the secondary plot. The primary was such a burden to get on with that I would only recommend this book to hardcore Wells' fans.
March 31, 2023
Le premier tiers était un peu long (et confus parfois) mais une fois que je suis arrivée a un des éléments déclencheurs de l'intrigue, j'ai passé un excellent moment!
Et le gros point fort c'est effectivement le personnage de Tremaine, que j'ai adoré! Martha Wells a un vrai talent pour écrire des personnages intéressants (mon baybay Murderbot <3) donc je ne suis pas étonnée. J'ai lirais le second tome très vite je pense! :)
Et le gros point fort c'est effectivement le personnage de Tremaine, que j'ai adoré! Martha Wells a un vrai talent pour écrire des personnages intéressants (mon baybay Murderbot <3) donc je ne suis pas étonnée. J'ai lirais le second tome très vite je pense! :)
April 3, 2013
I do love this trilogy with a passion.
June 29, 2018
Reading this ate up most of yesterday. I was hooked from the first line. Great adventure story with lots of twists and cool magic reveals. I'll be buying book two soon!
January 31, 2021
A steam-punk action-adventure tale set in the city of a previous series by Wells. This/these stories are independent. Strong, independent but not-yet self-assured female lead. Excellent story telling.
Early Wells work. Her voice has improved since. Still, fans of her Murderbot series may be disappointed that the self-depreciating humor and snarky inner dialogue of Murderbot aren’t there.
Unfortunately, I lost my notes, and while this is a good story I’m not inclined to re-read it just to pepper my review with quotes from the story, as is my normal practice.
Early Wells work. Her voice has improved since. Still, fans of her Murderbot series may be disappointed that the self-depreciating humor and snarky inner dialogue of Murderbot aren’t there.
Unfortunately, I lost my notes, and while this is a good story I’m not inclined to re-read it just to pepper my review with quotes from the story, as is my normal practice.
December 4, 2012
First posted here
The land of Ile-Rien is under attack by the seemingly invincible Gardier, who use their black airships to destroy, then seemingly disappear. The Gardier also somehow have the ability to block all the magic the Ile-Rien have for protection, and they also have a magic of their own that destroyed mechanized weapons.
Invincible army, one person holds an object of power, a person may wonder why I even cracked the cover of what seems like a very trite read. I admit at times in the book I wondered the same thing. There is some interesting stuff in this book, and in many ways it pushes beyond the cliches, but I can't say it ever grabbed me.
What worked well in this book? It had some unusual hooks. The main character, Tremaine, is looking for a way to keep herself in danger, a death wish without the desire for people to know it. This keeps her early motivations mysterious(though this plot line is almost completely discarded by the mid point). Both the Ele-Rien and the Gardier are living a technological era where magic is in use everyday, not hidden from the common eye. And there is an early culture clash when it is found the the Gardier hold a staging area in a land with a more "primitive" culture.
For all that almost nothing worked for me. There just wasn't the focus needed to make any thing work, none of the good ideas were really expanded on. Tremaine has a death wish, but it is gone halfway through the book, then explained away at the end. Not transitioned out, just explained away. The interesting first contact plot line is ruined for me by the ease of communication and by just how little difference there really is in the cultures, despite the characters seeming to think otherwise. And the neat mix of technology and magic comes to nothing, as magic rules throughout the entire book. The Gardier are given no depth, they are a faceless evil. The "primitives" are shallow, following the typical book wherein they need to have all their traditions proven to be wrong by a more knowing culture.
The book could not seem to decide what it wanted to be. At times high fantasy, escape story, war story, epic quest, and even a sad attempt at subversive espionage activities. Perhaps if the focus had been on a couple of these items it would have worked better, but none were expanded on enough to catch my interested, making the whole read fairly disjointed.
Lastly, and this is neither good nor bad, this book is definitely the first in a series. There is very little resolution in this book, it is obviously a setup for the future.
And for perhaps the strangest nit-pick I have every had, every male character of note in the book had a name that started with either A, I, or G(mostly G). Gardier, Giliead, Gerard, and Gervas. I am not sure if anyone else reads the way I do, but this caused me to backtrack and figure out which character is which several times.
2 stars. I can see it being of interest for fans who want something different, but for me it tried too many things, and did very few of them very well.
The land of Ile-Rien is under attack by the seemingly invincible Gardier, who use their black airships to destroy, then seemingly disappear. The Gardier also somehow have the ability to block all the magic the Ile-Rien have for protection, and they also have a magic of their own that destroyed mechanized weapons.
Invincible army, one person holds an object of power, a person may wonder why I even cracked the cover of what seems like a very trite read. I admit at times in the book I wondered the same thing. There is some interesting stuff in this book, and in many ways it pushes beyond the cliches, but I can't say it ever grabbed me.
What worked well in this book? It had some unusual hooks. The main character, Tremaine, is looking for a way to keep herself in danger, a death wish without the desire for people to know it. This keeps her early motivations mysterious(though this plot line is almost completely discarded by the mid point). Both the Ele-Rien and the Gardier are living a technological era where magic is in use everyday, not hidden from the common eye. And there is an early culture clash when it is found the the Gardier hold a staging area in a land with a more "primitive" culture.
For all that almost nothing worked for me. There just wasn't the focus needed to make any thing work, none of the good ideas were really expanded on. Tremaine has a death wish, but it is gone halfway through the book, then explained away at the end. Not transitioned out, just explained away. The interesting first contact plot line is ruined for me by the ease of communication and by just how little difference there really is in the cultures, despite the characters seeming to think otherwise. And the neat mix of technology and magic comes to nothing, as magic rules throughout the entire book. The Gardier are given no depth, they are a faceless evil. The "primitives" are shallow, following the typical book wherein they need to have all their traditions proven to be wrong by a more knowing culture.
The book could not seem to decide what it wanted to be. At times high fantasy, escape story, war story, epic quest, and even a sad attempt at subversive espionage activities. Perhaps if the focus had been on a couple of these items it would have worked better, but none were expanded on enough to catch my interested, making the whole read fairly disjointed.
Lastly, and this is neither good nor bad, this book is definitely the first in a series. There is very little resolution in this book, it is obviously a setup for the future.
And for perhaps the strangest nit-pick I have every had, every male character of note in the book had a name that started with either A, I, or G(mostly G). Gardier, Giliead, Gerard, and Gervas. I am not sure if anyone else reads the way I do, but this caused me to backtrack and figure out which character is which several times.
2 stars. I can see it being of interest for fans who want something different, but for me it tried too many things, and did very few of them very well.
January 8, 2023
I've committed to trying to give more word reviews instead of my typical stars, including going back and writing reviews as I re-read anything I've already read.
The Wizard Hunters is a book I frequently re-read. It's always loaded on my nook, although the first time I read it, it was a paperback version I picked up in a used book store. My usual used bookstore bookcheck involves picking out something with a title or cover that draws me in, reading the back or the inside flap, and then reading one or two pages to see if it clicks. I knew from the very first sentence of The Wizard Hunters that I was going to buy the book, which is rarer than one would like it to be.
I was not disappointed and years after the fact still love to reread the Ile-Rien novels. I was hopelessly pleased when some short stories were released later on, and always like to revisit the world even if I think Wells is done writing for it. The characters are well-written and interesting, and the plot within the three books of the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy is tightly woven and packs a few surprises. It's easy to get attached to everyone, and while the first time through I was impatient to get back to Tremaine and the Rienish when POVs swapped in the first book, I also know I quickly came to like Ilias and Gilead for their wry senses of humor.
Wells always has a really good grasp on conversation and banter, and her characters are always fun to read. That definitely shows through in this installment, and the story itself keeps me hooked time and time again. I always recommend this trilogy to everyone, because I love it forever.
The Wizard Hunters is a book I frequently re-read. It's always loaded on my nook, although the first time I read it, it was a paperback version I picked up in a used book store. My usual used bookstore bookcheck involves picking out something with a title or cover that draws me in, reading the back or the inside flap, and then reading one or two pages to see if it clicks. I knew from the very first sentence of The Wizard Hunters that I was going to buy the book, which is rarer than one would like it to be.
I was not disappointed and years after the fact still love to reread the Ile-Rien novels. I was hopelessly pleased when some short stories were released later on, and always like to revisit the world even if I think Wells is done writing for it. The characters are well-written and interesting, and the plot within the three books of the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy is tightly woven and packs a few surprises. It's easy to get attached to everyone, and while the first time through I was impatient to get back to Tremaine and the Rienish when POVs swapped in the first book, I also know I quickly came to like Ilias and Gilead for their wry senses of humor.
Wells always has a really good grasp on conversation and banter, and her characters are always fun to read. That definitely shows through in this installment, and the story itself keeps me hooked time and time again. I always recommend this trilogy to everyone, because I love it forever.
October 10, 2008
This is a VERY different fantasy. Almost a steampunk fantasy, because the magic is worked by means of mechanical doohickeys. In one of the universes of this story. This story crosses multiple universes. Two, anyway, with a probable third. The heroine's world is at war with these technologically advanced magic haters that fly in blimps and fry the magical instruments of her world. The hero lives in a completely different universe where ALL wizards are evil, and all magic spells are curses. He's a sidekick of the current avatar of the local god and goes around with him executing wizards. But the folks who have moved into the last wizard's old lair are different. They have these machine things. The story moves the hero and heroine closer and closer in their individual worlds, until finally they meet (in his) and their respective worlds ally against these bad guys. This is the first book in a trilogy, and a very interesting read. I'm going to have to order the next two off the internet and read them. (They weren't in the book store.)
May 23, 2017
In case you're wondering how into this series I am, I definitely almost chanted "OT3! OT3!" out loud at more than one point. (I for sure did it in my head.)
July 30, 2018
This review is for the entire series, and contains spoilers.
Ile-Rien is under siege. Blackouts and bombings wrack the city of Vienne. But Tremaine Valiarde has something else on her mind: how can she kill herself most effectively, without causing problems for anyone else? When her guardian turns up, asking for her help with a dangerous spell, Tremaine leaps at the opportunity. Instead of killing her, though, the spell drops her in a strange new world, which just may hold the secret to saving her own.
Most summaries of the first book in the series spend substantially more time focusing on the political and worldbuilding elements of the setup. Honestly, that’s a fair call. Tremaine’s initial primary motivation is her desire to commit suicide, and it does show up throughout the first book and the sequels, but overall, the book itself is more concerned with the action of the plot than substantive character development.
Ultimately, that’s also why, while I enjoyed this book, it’s never going to be on my list of must-recommends. The worldbuilding was fun, the plot was fast-paced and compelling, the stakes were substantial, but not overblown, but the emotional core of the book, the internal struggles and shifts that engage you as a reader, those fell a bit flat. It’s a pity, because the setup for those internal struggles was, across the board, excellent.
Let’s start with Tremaine. Tremaine Valiarde has some reasons to be deeply unhappy. Her mother was murdered when she was a child, her father was largely absent and often cold until he up and disappeared some years ago along with her much-loved uncle, her country is outmatched in its war and seems likely to be defeated, and she spent six months doing rescue-from-bombs work. And she was kidnapped and wrongfully imprisoned in a mental hospital a while ago.
While I can see why Wells chose not to make much use of Madeline’s death in characterizing Tremaine (we all know that a tragically murdered mother is both overdone and usually lazy writing), the vacuum left by Tremaine’s lack of reaction results in Madeline’s death serving largely to help us understand Tremaine’s father’s absenteeism and general ruthlessness, which is an inherently more problematic characterization choice. Not much hay was made of her other losses and stressors, either - the only thing that comes up repeatedly as something that still bothers her was her brief stint in the asylum, which she perceives as highly stigmatizing.
This perception may or may not be accurate; her encounters with one character, Anders, suggest to her that he bases his attitude towards her on this event. However, from an outside perspective, his refusal to take her seriously seems more in keeping with his overall smug paternalism towards women in general and with the fact that when they met she was sowing some wild oats. There are some interesting places to go with this fear she has, especially since the author suggests (a bit awkwardly) that she struggles to reconciles two very different personas, but her uncertainty about her identity is ultimately lost in the plot.
This unwillingness to deeply engage with questions of mental health and stigmatization is mirrored in a later incident in the third book. At this point, Tremaine has met and formed a relationship with Ilias, who comes from a world that is substantially less developed, industrially-speaking, than Tremaine’s world. Wells does an excellent job of presenting Ilias and his countrymen as fully-developed human beings with a society that is every bit as intricate and civilized as Tremaine’s own, and the automatic, unthinking respect that Tremaine and her friends demonstrate towards Ilias and his society provides an on-point, if unsubtle, contrast to the way that other characters characterize the Syprians as “savages.” Incidentally, I also liked that the Syprians are given opportunities to find Tremaine’s people uncivilized as well.
However, in the third book, they’re back in Tremaine’s world, and they encounter the remainder of a colonized people begging in the street. Wells shies away from fully engaging with this moment - Tremaine shuttles Ilias off without contextualizing what he’s seeing, and has a very brief internal commentary about how she fears that the same thing will happen to Ilias’s people now that worldgating technology is available. The topic of colonization is never again addressed, and while it becomes a moot point as far as Ilias et al are concerned, the lack of development of the theme was unsatisfying. Wells clearly wanted to include themes of colonization, mental health, and gender (Ilias’s society is a matriarchy), among others (militarization, nationalism, sexism, etc), in her novels, she ultimately seems unwilling to engage with them fully.
This is a legitimate choice, as the plot and pacing don’t leave much time for reflection, but I couldn’t help feeling that the novels would have been more satisfying if they had chosen one or two of these themes to develop more fully, rather than paying lip-service to many. The Fall of Ile-Rien is a gripping trilogy, but it lacks the emotional impact I was anticipating based on the opening (and the length - I generally assume that 1500 pages is enough to get some good characterization and thematic exploration in - the romantic element, incidentally, is much better than in Death of the Necromancer, but it’s still not Wells’ strong point). As light entertainment, it’s a good way to spend a couple of days. If you are looking for sprawling high fantasy with high stakes that will stick with you and make you cry, read the Inda series by Sherwood Smith.
There’s one other thing I want to mention, which is that some elements of the book feel derivative in a way that may or may not be homage. For example, the slum district in Vienne is called Riverside, the same as in Ellen Kushner’s Riverside series - the main character is suicidal and named Tremaine, and Alec, future duke of Tremontaine, is notoriously self-destructive. Other elements felt merely conventional, such as the worldgates, the magical spheres, and the whole thing with the crystals and the mind control. Where Wells really digs into the worldbuilding, she’s plenty fresh, but the trappings of conventionality are very present.
tl;dr - a fun, light summer read that doesn’t quite live up to its promise but is a pretty good way to spend a hot couple of days. Trigger warnings for suicidal ideation, misogynistic characters, references to colonialism, mental illness.
Ile-Rien is under siege. Blackouts and bombings wrack the city of Vienne. But Tremaine Valiarde has something else on her mind: how can she kill herself most effectively, without causing problems for anyone else? When her guardian turns up, asking for her help with a dangerous spell, Tremaine leaps at the opportunity. Instead of killing her, though, the spell drops her in a strange new world, which just may hold the secret to saving her own.
Most summaries of the first book in the series spend substantially more time focusing on the political and worldbuilding elements of the setup. Honestly, that’s a fair call. Tremaine’s initial primary motivation is her desire to commit suicide, and it does show up throughout the first book and the sequels, but overall, the book itself is more concerned with the action of the plot than substantive character development.
Ultimately, that’s also why, while I enjoyed this book, it’s never going to be on my list of must-recommends. The worldbuilding was fun, the plot was fast-paced and compelling, the stakes were substantial, but not overblown, but the emotional core of the book, the internal struggles and shifts that engage you as a reader, those fell a bit flat. It’s a pity, because the setup for those internal struggles was, across the board, excellent.
Let’s start with Tremaine. Tremaine Valiarde has some reasons to be deeply unhappy. Her mother was murdered when she was a child, her father was largely absent and often cold until he up and disappeared some years ago along with her much-loved uncle, her country is outmatched in its war and seems likely to be defeated, and she spent six months doing rescue-from-bombs work. And she was kidnapped and wrongfully imprisoned in a mental hospital a while ago.
While I can see why Wells chose not to make much use of Madeline’s death in characterizing Tremaine (we all know that a tragically murdered mother is both overdone and usually lazy writing), the vacuum left by Tremaine’s lack of reaction results in Madeline’s death serving largely to help us understand Tremaine’s father’s absenteeism and general ruthlessness, which is an inherently more problematic characterization choice. Not much hay was made of her other losses and stressors, either - the only thing that comes up repeatedly as something that still bothers her was her brief stint in the asylum, which she perceives as highly stigmatizing.
This perception may or may not be accurate; her encounters with one character, Anders, suggest to her that he bases his attitude towards her on this event. However, from an outside perspective, his refusal to take her seriously seems more in keeping with his overall smug paternalism towards women in general and with the fact that when they met she was sowing some wild oats. There are some interesting places to go with this fear she has, especially since the author suggests (a bit awkwardly) that she struggles to reconciles two very different personas, but her uncertainty about her identity is ultimately lost in the plot.
This unwillingness to deeply engage with questions of mental health and stigmatization is mirrored in a later incident in the third book. At this point, Tremaine has met and formed a relationship with Ilias, who comes from a world that is substantially less developed, industrially-speaking, than Tremaine’s world. Wells does an excellent job of presenting Ilias and his countrymen as fully-developed human beings with a society that is every bit as intricate and civilized as Tremaine’s own, and the automatic, unthinking respect that Tremaine and her friends demonstrate towards Ilias and his society provides an on-point, if unsubtle, contrast to the way that other characters characterize the Syprians as “savages.” Incidentally, I also liked that the Syprians are given opportunities to find Tremaine’s people uncivilized as well.
However, in the third book, they’re back in Tremaine’s world, and they encounter the remainder of a colonized people begging in the street. Wells shies away from fully engaging with this moment - Tremaine shuttles Ilias off without contextualizing what he’s seeing, and has a very brief internal commentary about how she fears that the same thing will happen to Ilias’s people now that worldgating technology is available. The topic of colonization is never again addressed, and while it becomes a moot point as far as Ilias et al are concerned, the lack of development of the theme was unsatisfying. Wells clearly wanted to include themes of colonization, mental health, and gender (Ilias’s society is a matriarchy), among others (militarization, nationalism, sexism, etc), in her novels, she ultimately seems unwilling to engage with them fully.
This is a legitimate choice, as the plot and pacing don’t leave much time for reflection, but I couldn’t help feeling that the novels would have been more satisfying if they had chosen one or two of these themes to develop more fully, rather than paying lip-service to many. The Fall of Ile-Rien is a gripping trilogy, but it lacks the emotional impact I was anticipating based on the opening (and the length - I generally assume that 1500 pages is enough to get some good characterization and thematic exploration in - the romantic element, incidentally, is much better than in Death of the Necromancer, but it’s still not Wells’ strong point). As light entertainment, it’s a good way to spend a couple of days. If you are looking for sprawling high fantasy with high stakes that will stick with you and make you cry, read the Inda series by Sherwood Smith.
There’s one other thing I want to mention, which is that some elements of the book feel derivative in a way that may or may not be homage. For example, the slum district in Vienne is called Riverside, the same as in Ellen Kushner’s Riverside series - the main character is suicidal and named Tremaine, and Alec, future duke of Tremontaine, is notoriously self-destructive. Other elements felt merely conventional, such as the worldgates, the magical spheres, and the whole thing with the crystals and the mind control. Where Wells really digs into the worldbuilding, she’s plenty fresh, but the trappings of conventionality are very present.
tl;dr - a fun, light summer read that doesn’t quite live up to its promise but is a pretty good way to spend a hot couple of days. Trigger warnings for suicidal ideation, misogynistic characters, references to colonialism, mental illness.
January 20, 2016
Spoiler-Free Review (I think . . .)
The story opened with a killer hook. What a fantastic opening line! It drew me in and introduced the heroine really well. Tremaine is an interesting character, full of delicious dichotomies. I love her moments of vulnerability because the rest of the time she's as tough as they come, but not with the kick-butt charisma of some other tough characters. She's so awkward. Ilias is strong with a good sense of humor; Giliead is protective and uncomfortable with the responsibility put on him--and perhaps a little lonely.
The first chapter was great. Then, like someone hit the breaks, it slowed way down. The introduction of Ilias and Giliead was not my cup of tea. There was a lot of narration about past events and not much action. I don't even need swashbuckling . . . just something more than paragraphs of backstory sprinkled with them climbing through a cave. Not exactly riveting. But I held out hope and after a few chapters it picked up again.
One thing I really like about this book it how not much happens but it fills lots of pages without feeling slow (except for the first few chapters, of course). I know that may sound weird--"not much happens"--but what I mean is that the events are so localized, so focused, that the characters, once entangled in those events, have no time to meander. Once the ball got rolling, it kept rolling.
At the same time, with all that rolling going on, it didn't feel rushed. There were scenes with crazy chases and fights, and then there were scenes where they just sat around tending to wounds and it was interesting. There was a good balance on the whole.
On the writing style: there were many, many commas. For example: "She struck hard-packed sand, the breath knocked out of her, the man landing heavily a few feet away. Wheezing, she twisted, kicking out at him. Caught by surprise and badly shocked, he lost his grip on . . ."
You get the idea (and hopefully that bit completely out of context didn't destroy anything for anyone.) Sometimes it just felt like the sentences could have been broken up a bit more. But that might just be personal preference; I tend to like short and punchy interspersed with the occasional long bit for emphasis. Overall, the writing was of good quality and didn't really bother me.
On the world-building: detailed and fascinating! I really liked Ile-Rein and Syrnai and how well they were described, how well the cultures were developed. Another thing I thought was absolutely fantastic was how she played the language card. All these races speak different languages. But everything is written in plain English--no funny keyboard slap thing that are meant to look like foreign languages. "Sorbgouerg irnilshhhf," he said, voice booming like war drums. That doesn't give me anything. Martha Wells did a fantastic job with this, making you feel the language barrier between the characters without creating one between them and the reader.
The realization at the climax had me gripping the book tightly!
Overall I really like this book! My only complaint is the initial slowness. But I know from experience that novel beginnings are hard, so I'm not going to fling around any blame.
The story opened with a killer hook. What a fantastic opening line! It drew me in and introduced the heroine really well. Tremaine is an interesting character, full of delicious dichotomies. I love her moments of vulnerability because the rest of the time she's as tough as they come, but not with the kick-butt charisma of some other tough characters. She's so awkward. Ilias is strong with a good sense of humor; Giliead is protective and uncomfortable with the responsibility put on him--and perhaps a little lonely.
The first chapter was great. Then, like someone hit the breaks, it slowed way down. The introduction of Ilias and Giliead was not my cup of tea. There was a lot of narration about past events and not much action. I don't even need swashbuckling . . . just something more than paragraphs of backstory sprinkled with them climbing through a cave. Not exactly riveting. But I held out hope and after a few chapters it picked up again.
One thing I really like about this book it how not much happens but it fills lots of pages without feeling slow (except for the first few chapters, of course). I know that may sound weird--"not much happens"--but what I mean is that the events are so localized, so focused, that the characters, once entangled in those events, have no time to meander. Once the ball got rolling, it kept rolling.
At the same time, with all that rolling going on, it didn't feel rushed. There were scenes with crazy chases and fights, and then there were scenes where they just sat around tending to wounds and it was interesting. There was a good balance on the whole.
On the writing style: there were many, many commas. For example: "She struck hard-packed sand, the breath knocked out of her, the man landing heavily a few feet away. Wheezing, she twisted, kicking out at him. Caught by surprise and badly shocked, he lost his grip on . . ."
You get the idea (and hopefully that bit completely out of context didn't destroy anything for anyone.) Sometimes it just felt like the sentences could have been broken up a bit more. But that might just be personal preference; I tend to like short and punchy interspersed with the occasional long bit for emphasis. Overall, the writing was of good quality and didn't really bother me.
On the world-building: detailed and fascinating! I really liked Ile-Rein and Syrnai and how well they were described, how well the cultures were developed. Another thing I thought was absolutely fantastic was how she played the language card. All these races speak different languages. But everything is written in plain English--no funny keyboard slap thing that are meant to look like foreign languages. "Sorbgouerg irnilshhhf," he said, voice booming like war drums. That doesn't give me anything. Martha Wells did a fantastic job with this, making you feel the language barrier between the characters without creating one between them and the reader.
The realization at the climax had me gripping the book tightly!
Overall I really like this book! My only complaint is the initial slowness. But I know from experience that novel beginnings are hard, so I'm not going to fling around any blame.
Read
December 30, 2020Fantasy/magic with a dose of steampunk. Readers searching for something slightly different in fantasy may be pleased here.
Some folks might call this a SciFi story; I'd say that's a huge stretch (magic & spells + wizards + magical creatures = pure fantasy). Tossing in a few traditional weapons and dirigibles doesn't make it SciFi.
It varied from 1.75 to 3+ stars for me, with the best parts being those that followed Tremaine and Florian. So let's call it 2.75 stars for me--but I think many fantasy lovers will easily give it 3-4 stars.
The main characters sometimes acted about 10 years younger than their stated ages, but were mostly not annoying. The magic system was largely unexplained, but moderately interesting. There's not a lot of logic or planning going on, as this is a story where the characters often get bounced from bad to worse situations--and just try to survive.
An eye-rolling moment/complaint: there was finally a chance to pernamently and easily take out a Very Bad Homicidal Villain--and no one bothered.
Some folks might call this a SciFi story; I'd say that's a huge stretch (magic & spells + wizards + magical creatures = pure fantasy). Tossing in a few traditional weapons and dirigibles doesn't make it SciFi.
It varied from 1.75 to 3+ stars for me, with the best parts being those that followed Tremaine and Florian. So let's call it 2.75 stars for me--but I think many fantasy lovers will easily give it 3-4 stars.
The main characters sometimes acted about 10 years younger than their stated ages, but were mostly not annoying. The magic system was largely unexplained, but moderately interesting. There's not a lot of logic or planning going on, as this is a story where the characters often get bounced from bad to worse situations--and just try to survive.
An eye-rolling moment/complaint: there was finally a chance to pernamently and easily take out a Very Bad Homicidal Villain--and no one bothered.
October 18, 2017
I went back and forth on whether I wanted to rate this one 3 or 4 stars. I did get what wanted out of it, which was an engaging and not overly-heavy adventure story, but I don't think I'd come back to it, and I'm not in a huge hurry to read the sequels. Tremaine and Ilias are great characters, but most of the secondary characters feel less developed. The setting of Ile-Rien is an unusual one for fantasy, but we don't get a lot of time to explore it outside of Tremaine's memories. Meanwhile the culture of Ilias's people felt underdeveloped to me. Maybe it's a side effect of the plot, but I just didn't get much of a sense for them beyond being apparently in constant danger from psychopathic wizards. The story is doing a lot at once, and I think maybe I wanted more time in one place or the other that wasn't all crisis. I want to read about Tremaine growing up in Vienne with Nicholas and Arisilde, trying to fit into society and inventing herself as the "flighty artist" to escape her father's world.
I'm kinda disappointed in the Gardier as villains. Their primary motivations seem to be just...be as evil as possible? I don't know, a war out of nowhere with a mystery enemy feels like a very empty conflict. Maybe the later books will do more to complicate them, but we had a brief glimpse of a Gardier POV that did nothing but reinforce the evil warmonger for its own sake view, so I'm not convinced it will happen. My favorite thing about the ending was the revelation about the true nature of the sphere and the Gardier's magic, and finding out more about what is going on with all that is probably what will keep me reading.
I'm kinda disappointed in the Gardier as villains. Their primary motivations seem to be just...be as evil as possible? I don't know, a war out of nowhere with a mystery enemy feels like a very empty conflict. Maybe the later books will do more to complicate them, but we had a brief glimpse of a Gardier POV that did nothing but reinforce the evil warmonger for its own sake view, so I'm not convinced it will happen. My favorite thing about the ending was the revelation about the true nature of the sphere and the Gardier's magic, and finding out more about what is going on with all that is probably what will keep me reading.
October 30, 2023
Martha Wells has more imagination and more heart than any other 12 authors put together. (Unless you're exceptionally persnickety about which authors you pick and the list includes a lot of names like "Pratchett," "Dunnett," and "Bujold.)"
She creates the most breath-taking and ambitious, and also enjoyable, worlds. In the Raksura books, she created the best tree-houses ever. Here, she reminagines World War II and the London Blitz, being sure to incorporate world-travel and a gorgeous cruise ship taken over by the soldiers where our protagonists get to live and run around. (Apparently, the Queen Ravenna was based on the real live Queen Mary).
There's also magic, adventure, romance, intrigue, mystery, and politics. It's just so well done and, have I mentioned? so much fun.
She creates the most breath-taking and ambitious, and also enjoyable, worlds. In the Raksura books, she created the best tree-houses ever. Here, she reminagines World War II and the London Blitz, being sure to incorporate world-travel and a gorgeous cruise ship taken over by the soldiers where our protagonists get to live and run around. (Apparently, the Queen Ravenna was based on the real live Queen Mary).
There's also magic, adventure, romance, intrigue, mystery, and politics. It's just so well done and, have I mentioned? so much fun.
January 27, 2020
I really enjoyed this book although, I'll concede, I really needed to enjoy a book right about now because work is beginning to rear its terrible head and that means stress cannot be far behind. So I turned to this because it was recommended to...well Twitter at large by Kate Elliott and I liked Elliott's alternate Britain with magic.
This was different, although in a good way. I enjoyed the adventure and it was the kind of steampunk that I like - there's magic and there's technology and people wear goggles and that's it. It's also epic fantasy with world saving and battles and espionage and it's a trilogy and I've given myself permission not to do any work for the rest of the weekend, so stay tuned for the next book in the series...
This was different, although in a good way. I enjoyed the adventure and it was the kind of steampunk that I like - there's magic and there's technology and people wear goggles and that's it. It's also epic fantasy with world saving and battles and espionage and it's a trilogy and I've given myself permission not to do any work for the rest of the weekend, so stay tuned for the next book in the series...
February 28, 2022
I tried really hard to stick with this book, but after 59% I couldn't take it any more. I'm not sure if the terrible narrator had anything to do with my experience, but aside from her - just imagine William Shatner was reading, every single sentence was choppy - I also got really bored with how many times the characters were all standing around talking, especially when one character thinks something, and then another character thinks the same thing in their POV. It just didn't seem to go anywhere very quickly. I was so disinterested I don't think I could even tell you what the plot was for the portion of the book I listened to.
I'm a massive fan of Wells' Murderbot books, but this one really was not that interesting.
I'm a massive fan of Wells' Murderbot books, but this one really was not that interesting.
July 30, 2007
Dammit, Wells! Her first book was excellent, her second was good, her third was terrible and this, her fourth, is only passably good. The story starts with the main character trying to kill herself. She’s sarcastic about the reasoning behind her suicide, which really endeared her to me; unfortunately, I didn't like the character that much for the rest of the novel. Wells excels at constructing theories of magic and dealing with the ensuing complications, and the novel itself is set in a magical version of Britain during the Blitz. Good enough that I'll read the sequels.
June 22, 2014
I loved the prequel, The Death of the Necromancer, but it took me a while to settle into this story. But once I did, it worked for me - well, strong fantasy with a subtle romance would obviously tick all my boxes. This was written almost ten years ago, and I thought its age showed slightly, but overall, good read.
September 5, 2019
Very, very rough start -- it's like a crossover event with two series you haven't read before. But if you can get past the first couple of chapters it starts to flow much more smoothly, making for an interesting book. Not really Wells's best (that would be the Death of the Necromancer), but good all the same.
January 26, 2018
My favourite of her novels thus far.
I love her heroine. I love the opening. It's just what I wanted to read.
I love her heroine. I love the opening. It's just what I wanted to read.
June 17, 2021
I must live under a rock; I don’t know why I didn’t know about Martha Wells. What an incredible find she is for me! Now I can say I love her work in general and I loved this book in particular. I listened to the audiobook versions of the murderbot series, one after the other on the recommendation of my daughter and loved them. The Wizard Hunters is the first book in a series of three books about a playwright in an alternate 1940s France (with magic) before the invasion, of unknown invaders from a near universe. Tremaine, our protagonist reminds me of Cordelia Vorkosigan (nee Naismith) perhaps my favorite character in SF. Tremaine is easily flustered, unhappy but brave, forceful, adventurous, and perceptive. She is someone I would love to know and would trust with saving my life and my world. She has agency. Ms. Wells writes complex, fully formed characters that deal with their world in fascinating and full ways. Her kind of magic unfolds as the story progresses; it makes sense, it is consistent, and it takes a person skill to use.
I depend on authors to give me a mix of new worlds peppered with accepted, and anticipated tropes, or I need to know that it will all work out at the end of the story, and it better get there sooner rather than later. I liked the pacing, the plot, the character development, the dialogue, and the emotional life of the characters. You can not complain that Tremaine has a dull moment, she doesn’t in this story. One of the most marvelous parts of this book is the view Ms. Wells gives us of the new world Tremaine discovers, an interesting, fully formed, and complex pre-industrial world. They have art, fine clothes, interesting buildings, and complex and full lives. I am glad there are no indigenous people wearing loin clothes, living in filth, and dying of infections.
On top of this is Ms. Wells continued exploration of machine intelligence. Boy, does she do a good job with this. I highly recommend this book.
I depend on authors to give me a mix of new worlds peppered with accepted, and anticipated tropes, or I need to know that it will all work out at the end of the story, and it better get there sooner rather than later. I liked the pacing, the plot, the character development, the dialogue, and the emotional life of the characters. You can not complain that Tremaine has a dull moment, she doesn’t in this story. One of the most marvelous parts of this book is the view Ms. Wells gives us of the new world Tremaine discovers, an interesting, fully formed, and complex pre-industrial world. They have art, fine clothes, interesting buildings, and complex and full lives. I am glad there are no indigenous people wearing loin clothes, living in filth, and dying of infections.
On top of this is Ms. Wells continued exploration of machine intelligence. Boy, does she do a good job with this. I highly recommend this book.
May 22, 2022
4.5 stars-This book starts off with one of the craziest opening sentences I've read, where our heroine Tremaine is contemplating ending things in the least messy way possible. I loved Wells narrative voice throughout this story and I fell for Tremaine as a main character. Wells writing is so sardonic and dry throughout, which ended up being a great touchpoint considering all the crazy elements to this world. Tremaine ends up not killing herself, because she is the daughter of Nicholas (from Death of the Necromancer) but he and Arsilde have killed themselves attempting an experiment and her touch is required to get the last sphere to work for the institute that they set up. Also their world is being attacked by mysterious figures known as the Gardier who can seemingly appear at will in their giant airships, and also apparently have tech that prevents magic from working around them. There is also a plot that connects from a group of islanders who are living on the island that the Gardier are using as their base and how they eventually meet up with our heroes and join forces. Towards the end of the book it's revealed that the sphere actually contains the "soul" or essence of Arsilde, which is why it can do all kinds of crazy stuff and that the Gardier have their own sphere with an essence in it, which Tremaine ends up freeing since it would seem that there's wasn't so consensual. I loved this world and these characters and I can't wait to finish this series and see where it goes next.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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