The Alchemists of Loom
Racial/class conflicts in a steampunk-ish world? Adventures of a trio of central characters there? Sure, it sounded interesting enough to give a try - certainly more so than the piles of self-published LitRPG books that seem to like to fill up my Amazon "recommended" lists.
Overall, I think it is pretty good and I expect to follow the series, but there are a few details that seem to hold it back from being "great" in my eyes.
The world is interesting enough, though feels a little shallow in areas. We have the surface world of Loom occupied by the Fenthri, who seem to be more-or-less gray-skinned humans, who were roughly organized around technical guilds as they built up to steampunk-ish tech levels and reached up into the sky. At which point, they came to the attention of the Dragons, who are strong and magical humanoids (even though dragon-dragons seem to exist in myth, which begs the question in my mind of whether there is a connection). The Dragons impose their very hierarchical societal views over the Fenthri, though also enable them to explore more powerful, magic-based, technology even if the only real source of magic is Dragon parts.
That gets a little iffy for me. Dragons are given a sort of fantasy-Japanese society themselves, heavy on honor and family and borrowing some titles directly. Maybe the window offered by the book is too limited just to the upper classes of Dragon society, but it seems a little difficult for me to reconcile what's shown with the total disregard for Dragon life - both in the death of some agents going largely unmourned and the general thought that a lot of Dragons must be sacrificed to have created the foundation for a form of technology and the creation of Chimeras (Fenthri with Dragon powers due to implanted Dragon bits) which is widely acknowledged. There has to be some deep divides in Dragon social class, but we don't really see that in this book.
The characters work fairly well without being too annoying to me. Arianna could be a little too perfect and capable a Chimera, but as perhaps the heroine of the book, that's not inexcusable. Florence, her support/student serves well as a perspective without the same burden of power and past - useful and perhaps idealistic, but not a heavy-hitter of the group herself. Cvareh (not pronounced how I would guess) the Dragon bugs me a little bit in how he seems like he's supposed to be a "powerful, but not especially skilled or remarkable" noble scion type, yet on a couple occasions he takes out trained Dragon knights with little apparent danger. The "sheltered noble" archtype can also be overly annoying, though he didn't quite stray over that line for me.
I want to get some more depth and see some questions answered. I think the dragon thing leaves open the possibility for some interesting history to the world and the races, but I'm not sure the series is going in that direction. Even if it doesn't, though, I find I wouldn't mind another outing with the characters, so we'll see where the next book leads.
Overall, I think it is pretty good and I expect to follow the series, but there are a few details that seem to hold it back from being "great" in my eyes.
The world is interesting enough, though feels a little shallow in areas. We have the surface world of Loom occupied by the Fenthri, who seem to be more-or-less gray-skinned humans, who were roughly organized around technical guilds as they built up to steampunk-ish tech levels and reached up into the sky. At which point, they came to the attention of the Dragons, who are strong and magical humanoids (even though dragon-dragons seem to exist in myth, which begs the question in my mind of whether there is a connection). The Dragons impose their very hierarchical societal views over the Fenthri, though also enable them to explore more powerful, magic-based, technology even if the only real source of magic is Dragon parts.
That gets a little iffy for me. Dragons are given a sort of fantasy-Japanese society themselves, heavy on honor and family and borrowing some titles directly. Maybe the window offered by the book is too limited just to the upper classes of Dragon society, but it seems a little difficult for me to reconcile what's shown with the total disregard for Dragon life - both in the death of some agents going largely unmourned and the general thought that a lot of Dragons must be sacrificed to have created the foundation for a form of technology and the creation of Chimeras (Fenthri with Dragon powers due to implanted Dragon bits) which is widely acknowledged. There has to be some deep divides in Dragon social class, but we don't really see that in this book.
The characters work fairly well without being too annoying to me. Arianna could be a little too perfect and capable a Chimera, but as perhaps the heroine of the book, that's not inexcusable. Florence, her support/student serves well as a perspective without the same burden of power and past - useful and perhaps idealistic, but not a heavy-hitter of the group herself. Cvareh (not pronounced how I would guess) the Dragon bugs me a little bit in how he seems like he's supposed to be a "powerful, but not especially skilled or remarkable" noble scion type, yet on a couple occasions he takes out trained Dragon knights with little apparent danger. The "sheltered noble" archtype can also be overly annoying, though he didn't quite stray over that line for me.
I want to get some more depth and see some questions answered. I think the dragon thing leaves open the possibility for some interesting history to the world and the races, but I'm not sure the series is going in that direction. Even if it doesn't, though, I find I wouldn't mind another outing with the characters, so we'll see where the next book leads.
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