“And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together”
-Colossians 1:17 If I had to summarize the theme of Rachel Starr Thomson’s Seventh World trilogy in once sentence, that is the one I would choose. This story’s greatest strength lies in its theme, that is, that without Jesus (or the King, as the allegorical figure is called), nothing in life has any meaning. Thomson is ruthless in her application of this message to her characters and world - even characters in rebellion against the King must ultimately derive their sustenance from him. This, however, does not make the story preachy. Although Thomson violates the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule in other areas, most notably in the resolution of the second book, she does not resort to doing so in order to communicate her theme. Rather, the characters’ dependence on the King is shown as they fail when trying to do things on their own. The mastery of theme, combined with some beautiful passages of prose and insightful character development, more than make up for the story’s flaws, although those exist as well. The worldbuilding is not particularly detailed or innovative. ‘Londren’ in ‘Bryllan’ across ‘the Channel’ is such a unique place-name that I initially thought the first book, Worlds Unseen, was set in dystopian Europe. There are only two real cultures in the world. In addition, the setting is referred to as the ‘Seventh World’, but no reason is ever given as to why this world is the seventh, or what happened to the other six worlds whose existence is implied by that title. The writing is in third-person omniscient and slides between viewpoints frequently. This isn’t necessarily a weakness, but it did give me a sort of ethereal, detached feel, as if I couldn’t quite connect with any one character because even though I was given glimpses into their thoughts, I wasn’t seeing things through their eyes. But that is mainly my opinion and another reader might experience things very differently. There are also a lot of characters, which meant some of them, such as Jerome and Lucas Barrington, didn’t get as much development as I would have liked. On the other hand, the unanswered questions surrounding these characters make them much more interesting. Still, I hope Thomson returns to this world and writes a spin-off novel explaining what happened to Barrington. The other weakness in the Seventh World trilogy is that it’s too short - not just in the ‘it’s so good I never want it to end’ way, although that is true, but also in the ‘important scenes were summarized when the story would have been much better if they had been told from the viewpoint of one of the characters’ way. This is a trait in all of Thomson’s writing, and it’s actually much less prominent here than in the Prophet trilogy or Oneness cycle. I believe that this could be related to the fact that she self-publishes and thus loses the benefits of a rigorous publishing process. Content There’s pretty much nothing to worry about here. Sex in nonexistent, there’s no foul language, and while there are battles, so little description is given of the violence that I believe the story could have benefited from a little bit more. There’s one scene where a character draws his sword and is about to fight another character, and the next sentence is “And then [spoiler] died” without any details given about the fight. Conclusion Although I think it the could have been improved by going through an editor and the traditional publishing process, the Seventh World trilogy remains one of my favorite series and is highly recommended. The ebook edition of the first installment in the series is free on Amazon, so you have almost nothing to lose by trying it out.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Progress on Doombear, Rough draft:10%
Progress on The Lore of Yore, third draft:
100%
"In truth, by leaving, I was seeking only one thing. A journey."
-Oathbringer, pg 981 Types of blog posts:
All
|