Book Review: A Tangle of Gold
May. 2nd, 2016 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI finished Jacqueline Moriarty's A Tangle of Gold, which I enjoyed very much! It's the third book in her Colors of Madeleine trilogy, and a fitting conclusion for this strange, whimsical ride.
The writing is excellent, as Moriarty's writing always is. She's always had a bright, light-hearted voice, funny and full of whimsical imagery - I particularly like her dialogue; her teenagers sound like teenagers, not so much in that they mimic specific slang (which dates quickly anyway), but in their intensity and passion and occasional goofiness.
But I think her ability to fold pathos effectively into that framework has grown tremendously through her books. I felt the melding didn't quite work in her first book, Feeling Sorry for Celia, but by A Tangle of Gold she's mastered it: there's a moment about halfway through the book (I won't say what it is so as to avoid spoilers; that is the one problem with discussing the third book in a trilogy) where the emotional tension is so great that it was hard to read through it.
At this point, a character works magic through the sheer intensity of her emotions, which I usually feel is a cop-out - but this time I really believed it. The emotional atmosphere was that strong.
Moriarty also pulled off a Big Reveal which was both totally unexpected and yet also made perfect sense; I don't think I've seen that done so well since Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon.
It's not a perfect trilogy. The world-building is frustrating if you approach it with the idea that it should all hang together sensibly - for instance, how the hell do you farm in a world where seasons blow in and out like rain? Summer one day, winter for the next two weeks, and then a spot of spring! But it's rather charming if you let go and just go with the flow.
Moreover, it's very much infested with Moriarty's greatest flaw as a writer: she seems to be unable to resist a good conspiracy theory. Or a bad conspiracy theory. Or a so-so to middling conspiracy theory. The result is that the actual power in the Kingdom of Cello ends up lying three conspiracies behind the throne, each conspiracy more secret, shadowy, and weird than the last.
The end result of this is that the royal family of Cello is fascinating as a picture of a dysfunctional family, but never quite convincing as part of the power structure of the country. In fact the political plot never did take off for me, which made the book less powerful than it might have been. But it's still more than worth reading for the personal relationships between the characters.
The writing is excellent, as Moriarty's writing always is. She's always had a bright, light-hearted voice, funny and full of whimsical imagery - I particularly like her dialogue; her teenagers sound like teenagers, not so much in that they mimic specific slang (which dates quickly anyway), but in their intensity and passion and occasional goofiness.
But I think her ability to fold pathos effectively into that framework has grown tremendously through her books. I felt the melding didn't quite work in her first book, Feeling Sorry for Celia, but by A Tangle of Gold she's mastered it: there's a moment about halfway through the book (I won't say what it is so as to avoid spoilers; that is the one problem with discussing the third book in a trilogy) where the emotional tension is so great that it was hard to read through it.
At this point, a character works magic through the sheer intensity of her emotions, which I usually feel is a cop-out - but this time I really believed it. The emotional atmosphere was that strong.
Moriarty also pulled off a Big Reveal which was both totally unexpected and yet also made perfect sense; I don't think I've seen that done so well since Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon.
It's not a perfect trilogy. The world-building is frustrating if you approach it with the idea that it should all hang together sensibly - for instance, how the hell do you farm in a world where seasons blow in and out like rain? Summer one day, winter for the next two weeks, and then a spot of spring! But it's rather charming if you let go and just go with the flow.
Moreover, it's very much infested with Moriarty's greatest flaw as a writer: she seems to be unable to resist a good conspiracy theory. Or a bad conspiracy theory. Or a so-so to middling conspiracy theory. The result is that the actual power in the Kingdom of Cello ends up lying three conspiracies behind the throne, each conspiracy more secret, shadowy, and weird than the last.
The end result of this is that the royal family of Cello is fascinating as a picture of a dysfunctional family, but never quite convincing as part of the power structure of the country. In fact the political plot never did take off for me, which made the book less powerful than it might have been. But it's still more than worth reading for the personal relationships between the characters.
