Cast in Honor is the 11th book in the Chronicles of Elantra, a series good enough that I read the first 10 books within a couple months last fall. Then a 6 month gap until now when our library could borrow Cast in Honor, published in late 2015. This review covers book 11 and the series in general.
The Good Points
Author Michelle Sagara built a wonderfully rich, complex world peopled with different types of people, all different. Two, Dragons and Barrani, are immortal, meaning they can be killed but don’t die of disease or old age. The two immortal people warred for millennia until the Dragon emperor established his rule in Elantra close to the Barrani primary place, The Halls. Dragons and Barrani buried the hatchet – more or less – but do not like or trust each other.
The elements themselves (earth, air, fire and water) have power and roles but are left rather mysterious and mystical. One of the most interesting characters is Evanton, the Keeper of the Elements. I was always glad to see Evanton with his wry sense of humor and quiet expertise.
The plot in books 2-10 move and are intriguing, although each has dull spots and times where you want to shake the main character, Kaylin and ask her to just grow up, will you?
The Weak Points
Unfortunately book 11 revisits and repeats the same problems as annoyed me in book 1 and occasionally in the other stories.
- Too much telling and not enough showing
- Lots and lots of thinking and not much action
- Unclear motives and rationale
- Plot elements that just happen and don’t seem to go anywhere
- No character development
- Sketchy and unexplained new characters and back stories with heavy doses of mysticism
- Heroine Kaylin is unlikable, obtuse, defiantly and stubbornly ignorant of her magic, unwilling to learn to speak to her dragon familiar, to learn anything related to magic. Yet she somehow manages to save the world in every book.
- I don’t see how Sagara could build upon the new characters from Cast in Honor, and the book didn’t feel like a new story arc. Maybe it a throw away, a little lagniappe story tucked in a series where it didn’t fit.
I remember every high school English teacher telling us to show, not tell and it’s hard to do. Sagara wrote some complicated back story points that have to be told, but struggles to do so in any way other than just telling us.
We are told that Kaylin is perpetually late, has messy personal habits, is dedicated to her job as a Hawk (aka cop on the beat), fiercely loyal to her friends, not very trusting. Sagara spends most of book 1 telling us these things. I almost tossed the first book back into the library return bag, but she had just enough hints of a real story that I read the series.
Besides the faults that Sagara tells us about, we can see that Kaylin is also rude, disrespectful, expects special treatment/is a spoiled brat, intellectually lazy and completely oriented to now, with no concern for future. Kaylin grew up hand to mouth (when lucky enough to have something in her hand to put in her mouth) so realize the spoiled brat part isn’t displayed in material ways but more in expectations as to how the world should operate and her unwillingness to learn.
Summary
Sagara’s Elantra is interesting and complex. She used the first several novels to help us understand the dynamics within the city and its history. For example, there are 5 fiefs in the center of Elantra, and I kept wondering why the all-powerful emperor didn’t just shove the fief lords out and take over. It’s not until book 3 or so that we realize the fiefs are quite different from medieval fiefs and a few books later find the fief lords are essential to maintain reality.
This is a series that you need to read in order as the plot elements and characters build upon each other book to book. You could read a couple of the earlier ones out of sequence but the last several follow one right after the other.
I almost didn’t finish the first book Cast in Shadow, but it was just that close to being good that I read on and went to the next. And the next, the next and the next, all the way through the 10th book. Now with book 11 Cast In Honor I’m back to wondering whether to bother going ahead. It just wasn’t that good.
3 Stars
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