M. C. Planck

Technically speaking this is closer to a 3.5 because while the mystery of Kassa drew me in, the writing style left me feeling unenchanted. It was very...stark feeling. Especially in the beginning, it felt as if someone was just reading off the important information. Prudence talks about her crew, crew she will regret seeing go and will miss, very clinically. Kyle sort of behaves in the same manner about the crew he is forced to endure in the beginning, but he has no love for them (nor they for him) so it makes a bit more sense.

This largely goes away around 2/3rds of the way through, but makes an abrupt return sporadically jarring me out of the reading zone.

This also had a very familiar feeling to it and it took me a while to figure out what that feeling was - anyone who has watched Blake's 7 or Farscape or Serenity may experience the same sort of thing. Prue's crew is ragtag and mismatched, all folk trying to duck out on the official Government levels for various reasons (even Kyle to a certain extent) making their way in the universe doing what they can to survive. They run afoul of a deeper conspiracy (Kassa) and feel honor bound, in a weird way, of seeing it through to the end. Though as Planck has listed Firefly as an inspiration for this novel, that's hardly surprising.

I'll give Planck credit however, the science fiction part of this novel doesn't ever delver anywhere I couldn't keep up with, which is rather remarkable once the secret worth killing for rears its ugly (ugly) head. There's also an impressive use of double talk--politically and legally speaking, which was fun to decipher. Its a bit ruined by the fact Kyle kept confusing matters internally, thus breaking up the narrative somewhat, but ignoring his 'I'm so confused by this doublespeak' thoughts helped.

This isn't a very long book--288 pages, which makes this a quick read. Parts get bogged down by sciencey-talk, or political talk and there's even some discussion that transcends the metaphysical, but by in large a reader can breeze through this and not be confused. Until the end, it gets a bit jumbled when Pru and co are racing through the nodes ahead of the Big Bad at one point. And honest to god I kind of felt dejavu because it really does follow an eerily similar plot progression with Serenity at the very end.

The characters are agreeable enough; Pru is slightly inconsistent in how she acts (though it may partially be because Kyle's impression of her vs. how she thought she presented herself were wildly different) and Kyle is a bit manic, but I enjoyed both of them coming up with every paranoid excuse in the book as to how the other one wants them dead. The secondary characters had a bit more life to them--I especially liked Jorgun and Jandi, who both shared a love of Marvin the Martian.

The ending is anticlimatic--more political than anything else and largely dealt with in the epilogue as 'and this is what happened after' fashion. Still the mystery of Kassa kept me engaged until the very end.… (more)

3-1/2 stars
Nice space opera. Occasionally there was this vague feeling of ambiguity that bothered me. I can't really put my finger on it. Something about how the characters seemed to know what was going on but it wasn't adequately explained to the reader. On the whole though I really enjoyed it. There were lots of words and phrases that were really fun and descriptive and I just loved the use of English. The characters were interesting and well motivated and there was a bit of a love story going on. Pretty minor and it ran in the background and was more along the lines of two lonely people finding each other. A nice intrigue plot for the characters to solve motivated the story. The sci fi elements were very well done. I liked the emphasis on ship movement and the diaspora element of human settlement of the stars.… (more)

Judgment at Verdant Court is book three in the World of Prime series, which I highly recommend reading in order. The first book is Sword of the Bright Lady, and the general hook is that a man from our world is dropped into a fantasy world that strongly resembles a fantasy RPG. If that sounds like your brand of nerdiness, I’d suggest checking the first book out. Forewarning, the rest of this review may contain spoilers for the first two books.

Christopher has now discovered that there’s a threat lurking in this world, worse than anything he’s yet encountered. The harvesting may be neigh, and his fledgling industrial revolution is more important than ever. Plus, he’s still got to deal with the monsters in the swamp, arrogant nobility, and political situations which he is totally unprepared for.

In my review of Gold Throne in Shadow, I complained about how the book was straight forwardly using the “race of evil” trope in regards to the wolf-men creatures which live in the wilderness. I’m happy to report that Judgment at Court Verdant adds some moral ambiguity to this situation! This is the greatest improvement I’ve seen in the series, and I’m really pleased with this plot twist. I’ll leave the details for the reader to discover, but this is my favorite development of the series.

I’m still lukewarm on characterization. Christopher is just too much of an every man character for me, and the secondary characters come off as mostly one note, although I think Karl and Lalania have potential. I’m still wary about how Fey’s being handled. I’m glad that the last book pointed out that what she did was rape, but I wish she faced more consequences.

I was wondering if this series was going to be a trilogy or would contain more books. After the ending of Judgment at Court Verdant, I certainly hope there’s more books! Still, the ending felt more like an “End of Act I” than an outright cliffhanger, so I’m thankful for that.

While this series isn’t without its flaws, I’ve generally found it be pretty solidly entertaining. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the idea of a fantasy world based off of RPG mechanics.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy from Pyr in exchange for an honest review.… (more)