The giveaway gods were smiling on me again when I won a copy of Courtney Schafer’s fantasy debut from the Staffer’s Musings blog. I hadn’t previously read any of the reviews in detail, but I got the sense that it had been favorably received overall—plus, I really wanted to find out just what was going on in that cover—so I threw my name in the proverbial hat, and viola! free book! Following some friendly correspondence with Ms. Schafer, a copy of The Whitefire Crossing showed up in my mailbox, complete with an encouraging personalized message in the front. Very lovely. Thanks, Courtney!
I had told her I wasn’t sure I’d get to reading it before year’s end; I was in the middle of Brent Weeks’ massive Night Angel trilogy, and having already let too much time pass between reading the first two books (you know how it is sometimes) I wanted to finish the whole thing in one go. Well, Thanksgiving rolls along, and the end of the second book is within sight, but man I really didn’t want to lug that massive omnibus edition up to my grandparents’ house, and The Whitefire Crossing had been sitting on my nightstand this whole time, with me (rather unexpectedly) itching to read it…
So I packed it and brought it up with me. Cracked it open Thanksgiving Day, and was immediately hooked.
Hooked bad.
Dev is a mountaineer and a smuggler who takes a job that’s a little out of the ordinary: smuggling a man across the titular Whitefire Mountains and into the country of Alathia. Kiran is the man being smuggled. He’s also a mage, on the run from an even more powerful mage. And magic is outlawed in Alathia…
The story is told in intriguing fashion: the narrative alternates between Dev’s and Kiran’s perspectives, but where Kiran’s POV is told from a third-person perspective, Dev’s is done in the first-person. It’s a fantastic device, as both characters have secrets they’re trying to keep from the other, and never truly getting inside Kiran’s head means the mysteries surrounding him remain tantalizing. However, the imbalance also means Kiran never quite seems as “real” a character as Dev, but that’s okay, because Dev makes for such a fantastic POV character. Saying he’s basically Han Solo seems kind of unfair, but it’s not entirely off the mark; he’s very much of the smuggler-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype, though his gold is perhaps a tad tarnished. But he’s got a past history and well-defined motivations; Schafer makes him a very real, very three-dimensional person. (Which is not to say Kiran doesn’t have those things, as well—he does. But again, he’s got that slight feeling of removal from the reader that Dev does not.)
There’s plenty of magic in the book, and mages and charms and wards and everything; it’s very well done, nicely consistent, and integrated into the story seamlessly and effortlessly. There’s not too much else to say about it. The plot’s not nearly as straightforward as my (very) brief synopsis above makes it out to be; there are some fantastic twists and turns that take the story in unexpected directions. But I don’t have much else to say about the plot. This is a book about relationships. Dev and Kiran. Dev and his fellow outrider, Cara. Dev and his former mentor, Sethan. Kiran and his master, Ruslan. I’ll stop there, but you get the idea.
The book is the first in a series, with The Tainted City due in late 2012. Don’t let that stop you from picking it up. This first entry more or less stands on its own, and comes to an acceptable (if not entirely satisfactory) conclusion. The future of the series depends on how well the first two books do, and they deserve to do quite well indeed.
I went into this review having given the book a 3.5-star rating. 3 stars is pretty much my baseline “I enjoyed it” rating; 2.5 would be “I enjoyed it, but” and 3.5 is a favorable “I enjoyed it, and…” 4 stars is another level entirely, and much as I wanted to, I didn’t feel like The Whitefire Crossing was quite at that level. But reflecting back on the book while writing and proofing this review, it’s become obvious to me that it is at that level. This is a really good book. [4 out of 5 stars]
Tags: 4 stars, book reviews, books, sf challenge 2011
[...] “The giveaway gods were smiling on me again when I won a copy of Courtney Schafer’s fantasy debut from the Staffer’s Musings blog. I hadn’t previously read any of the reviews in detail, but I got the sense that it had been favorably received overall—plus, I really wanted to find out just what was going on in that cover—so I threw my name in the proverbial hat, and viola! free book! Following some friendly correspondence with Ms. Schafer, a copy of The Whitefire Crossing showed up in my mailbox, complete with an encouraging personalized message in the front. Very lovely. Thanks, Courtney! I had told her I wasn’t sure I’d get to reading it before year’s end; I was in the middle of Brent Weeks’ massive Night Angel trilogy, and having already let too much time pass between reading the first two books (you know how it is sometimes) I wanted to finish the whole thing in one go. Well, Thanksgiving rolls along, and the end of the second book is within sight, but man I really didn’t want to lug that massive omnibus edition up to my grandparents’ house, and The Whitefire Crossing had been sitting on my nightstand this whole time, with me (rather unexpectedly) itching to read it… So I packed it and brought it up with me. Cracked it open Thanksgiving Day, and was immediately hooked. Hooked bad.” Read more. [...]