Jackelian Series

Book 1: The Court of the Air
Book 2: The Kingdom Beyond the Waves
Book 3: The Rise of the Iron Moon
Book 4: Secrets of the Fire Sea

HarperVoyager (2008)
ISBN: 9780007232215
$22.99
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Reviewed by Mitenae, Oct 2009


Amelia Harsh is an archaeologist determined to prove that the legendary Camlantis once existed. But there’s a problem. She’s been kicked out of all the universities in Jackals, and no one will fund her expedition. Until she meets Abraham Quest, who not only offers her the funding, but also the location of where Camlantis once existed.

Cornelius Fortune lives on an island in the middle of the Gambleflowers river, isolated, with a small staff, and Septimoth, a Lashlite. Fortune has plans of his own, but they are thrown into disarray when he learns that the bodies of the oldest steammen are being dug up, and parts stolen in a desecration of their graves for some unknown reason. Fortune and Septimoth intend to find out why but it leads them on a very unexpected journey.

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is set in the same world as The Court of the Air and one of the delights of this series is that you don’t have to be familiar with the first book in order to understand or enjoy this book. A few characters from the first book appear in this, but you don’t have to have read it to know their backstory.

Hunt has created an interesting world, one that is a bit like H.G. Wells, China Miéville, and with a hefty dose of contemporary fantasy. It’s a world that is fluid and appears to grow to meet the author’s demands. A map is not included, making it hard to pin down where each of the different areas sits in relation to the others.

Given the world and characters Hunt has created I expected a far better reading experience than I had, and it’s a result of simple things, like dialogue and characterisation not being used as effectively as they could have been.

I found the characterisation to be poor. That isn’t to say that the characters are not well-developed, because they are, it’s just that too often I found myself being told about them, being told what they were doing instead of being allowed to be there with them.

The dialogue is also poorly utilised. It doesn’t fully reflect conversation nor does it allow the characters to play off each other or express their relationships through their interplay. It is also used for dumping exposition (a.k.a. the dreaded infodump). Rather than allowing information to come out gradually via conversation, it tends to come out in chunks. So instead of being teased, of being given a taste and being allowed to fill in the gaps, I found that I was being told far too much of what I was able to work out for myself.

The language isn’t evocative enough and for the most part it lacks a spark that would make the world come alive, draw me in and not let me go. This story just does not do that for me. In the end, it was a relief to finally finish the book, which isn’t the kind of experience I want to have.

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is not a book I would re-read readily enough. It’s the sort of book I would only come back to if I was really bored and didn’t have anything else to read.