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Book review: Word of Honour and Time of Trial, Michael Pryor

The Laws of Magic series continues to check all the right boxes: Cracking – check. Inventive – check. Intriguing (in the best sense of the word, the one that implies spies and politics and conspiracies) – check. In Word of Honour, junior magician Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his pals save the capital of the great nation of Albion, their universe’s incarnation of England, from magical distruction; in Time of Trial, they travel to Holmland – that is, Germany – in an attempt to avert war.

Time is the better of the two, because the stakes are higher: war is close, Holmland is dangerous, and the romantic tension between Aubrey and Caroline is more electric than ever. (Seriously, if they don’t at least share a chaste kiss in the next instalment, I will die.)

These are good books, though I do have one complaint. And it’s a biggie.

The villain of the piece – who I won’t name, because it’d spoil the end of Blaze of Glory, though I will refer to him as “he”, which isn’t really a spoiler since almost all of Laws of Magic’s major characters are men1 – is not a formidable enough opponent for Aubrey, our protagonist. I don’t mean that in the sense that the villain isn’t powerful; we’re constantly reminded of his power. I mean that he’s not a compelling villain.

In Word of Honour the villain runs around concocting plots intended to spark a world war, basically as a means to securing his own power. (His motives are revealed in more detail in Blaze, though again, I don’t want to spoilt it.) But he’s a villain because we’re told he’s a villain – he doesn’t really do anything especially villainous. And even when he does appear on the page, he’s a bit two-dimensional. “Evil and smug cackle, I have you in the clutches of my nefarious plan now,” etc.

In Time of Trial Michael Pryor attempts to rectify this by expounding on the villain’s backstory, revealing details about his family and background. Though it’s still unsatisfying – who is this guy? Why is he like this? How come he doesn’t just kill Aubrey? I’ve read all four books in the series so far and I don’t really have a sense of the bad guy. He’s just “the bad guy” to me, and I want him to be more. (In Pryor’s defence, I have the same beef with Lord of the Rings. Sauron = zzzzz.)

  1. Note: that’s not the say the series has no strong female charaters, because it does, just that most of the major characters have penises. Which fits the books’ early-20th century setting. [↩]

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 4th, 2010 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Reading, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://www.votefitzwilliam.tumblr.com Dora

    You know what I love? I love Googling the name “Aubrey Fitzwilliam”. I do it about once a month and it nearly always turfs up a gold nugget. In this instance it’s your blog. 
    So, to start with, YOU HAVE A WHOLE TAG FOR AUBREY FITZWILLIAM. RESPECT.
    Also… no, wait. Context. Hah. Yeah. 
    I am a devotee of the Laws of Magic series, to the extent that I run a fansite for it, hence the above-mentioned Googling and so forth. (It’s over at votefitzwilliam.tumblr.com, and currently bears a link to this page what with its awesomeness, of which I intend to sing the praises shortly.) Hi.
    Oh-kay, and back to praise-singing.
    What with my being a LoM fan, etc, as above, I read reviews of the LoM books, as many as I can find. And these here are in my view the best of the bunch. (Before you wonder, I do not say this on the comments section of all the reviews simply because they are for LoM. In fact, sometimes my dislike for certain specimens of reviewhood – and these are positive reviews, mind – descend to the level of my condemning them to various of my friends. On one particularly gratifying occasion the spirited response of a friend to this condemnation was “What?! Who is this person, I need to STAB THEM IN THE FACE WITH MY FEMINIST KNIFE!” So I’m not spraying praise around for kicks here, although I am rampaging and ranting a little. Pardon me, I’m sure.) 
    Best of the bunch. Yes. Because for a start you very obligingly HAVE NOT SPOILED THE WHOLE PLOT. This is always a nice change. Particularly when the non-spoilage extends to not divulging the nemesis’ name (a skill I rather spectacularly lack). And then there is the sheer inventiveness of the ways in which you point out how LoM rocks the world. Lots of reviews are so yawnworthy, one wonders why they even bothered to put finger to keyboard. This, on the other hand, deserves to be displayed in the “What You’re Meant To Do” exhibition for reviewers.
    And then the bit where you sort-of-actually-criticise the books. With the bad-guy critique here, for instance. I mean, that stings, because I have trouble when people point out the little tiny (possible) holes. (To the extent that I maintain that the rather appalling typo “Miss Fitzwilliam” in the final pages of Heart of Gold is Duval’s move to get Aubrey and Caroline together. This is legit, because he is Gallian. My logic is irrefutable. Right? Right?) It’s hard to read that particular paragraph of this review but I’m glad I did because it means I can appreciate that this is a three-dimensional review. A full-on, proper review. It is a beautiful thing and completely resonates with my fandom. Thank you for writing it. May your camels be plentiful and the oasis always be at your side, and so forth. REALLY. THANK YOU. I AM REDUCED TO CAPSLOCKAGE.
    Yrs,
    Dora.

    (P.S. One question, though. Moment of Truth being what it is, I presume you aren’t dead, or at least not of UST-related causes. So why do the final two books lack reviews?)

  • http://www.samdowning.com Sam Downing

    Easily the best response to a review I’ve ever had.

    And I haven’t reviewed the last two because I haven’t read them yet! Though
    I do have Moment of Truth in my “to-read” pile.