My sporadic, occasionally enlightening but just as often disappointing journey into the land of tie-in fiction and shared worlds continues…
The one thing that I’ve come to realise (and what has kept me reading in this sub-genre) is that there really isn’t a great deal of difference between tie-in fiction and that which is solely the author’s own creation. Either is just as likely to be well written and a compelling read. On the other hand, either is just as likely to be disappointing for one reason or another. You really don’t know until you pick the book up and start reading…
One thing that I really enjoy about fantasy and sci-fi is spending time in the innumerable cityscapes of this fiction and maybe that’s a post for another time. Suffice it to say that when the blurb told me that ‘The God Catcher’ was entirely city based, that as well as the chance to have another go at fiction of a tie-in nature piqued my interest. As it turned out, things didn’t entirely go my way…
Only in a work of fantasy would you find the heroine living in an apartment in the hollowed out remains of a formerly sentient statue. That’s what ‘The God Catcher’ is and that’s where it all begins…
Tennora’s ambition is to become a wizard but some things just aren’t meant to be. What life really has in store for her starts to unfold when a mad woman turns up outside the God Catcher and starts screaming for the landlady. Nestrix is far more than just another mad woman on the streets of Waterdeep however and Tennora will find that her well meaning attempt to help will land her in the kind of trouble that she never even dreamed of. Intrigue and other machinations abound in Waterdeep and it’s never the right time for a clueless bystander to get involved…
At first glance, writing tie-in fiction seems deceptively easy in that a writer doesn’t have to worry about filling in the background. It’s all there already and all the writer has to worry about is telling the story that sits against this backdrop. I’d disagree here and say that if a writer has been given all the background details already then the pressure is on even more for said writer to put their stamp on the scenery as well as telling a great story with memorable characters. Erin Evans succeeds in two out of these three areas…
Under Evans’ pen, the city of Waterdeep really comes to life on the page; full of everything that a city needs to be a thriving home for a great story. Waterdeep’s geography is mentioned enough so that the reader really gets a feel not only for where they are but also where they are in relation to the street they read about a couple of chapters ago. Erin really takes time to ground the reader in these streets as the story progresses, giving us a solid background to base the plot against. It’s not just a solid background either, Evans drops us in the middle of a city that is thriving with life and leaves us with the impression that Tennora’s story is just one of many that are taking place all at the same time. Each of the areas of the city are distinct in their character, maybe a little too distinct to really give the impression that this is one city (it’s more like a collection of smaller towns). The important thing though is that Evans really gives her reader a feel for what’s happening on these streets; whether it’s the cosmopolitan area around the God Catcher, the shadier areas around the dock or the dank city sewers… Waterdeep is a city that I would quite happily spend more time in!
If Evans’ portrayal of Waterdeep wasn’t enough to whet the appetite, the plot itself well worth sticking around for. Evans proves to be a bit of a master at laying the seeds for one plot and then having it turn into something else when you’re not expecting it (even though it ends up looking like it was going that way the whole time). This approach is encouraged along by plenty of action and the end result is a story that bristles with intrigue and burns along at a heady pace just when it needs to. Evans is always in control and steers things in just the right direction, no mean feat when you’re dealing with at least one dragon and all the Machiavellian scheming that comes with it. That ‘story within a story’ slant cast all the events happening in Waterdeep when it became truly apparent.
It’s a shame then that the characters playing their parts didn’t quite match up to the heady expectations I had after reading my way through the city and plot. I think it was the fact that ensuing events drove the characters (rather than the other way round) that left things feeling a little flat, almost like there was so much happening that the characters didn’t have time to fully flesh themselves out. This was a pity as characters like Veron had the potential to make for an interesting read (I wouldn’t mind seeing more adventures featuring that particular character) but didn’t really have the time to shine.
Despite this issue though (and a small one surrounding the cityscape itself) ‘The God Catcher’ proved to be a fun read that has more to it than you would think at first. Like I said earlier, I wouldn’t mind spending more time in Waterdeep and I would certainly pick up Evans’ next book to see what she comes up with next.
Eight and a Quarter out of Ten
1 comment:
Interesting. Waterdeep is certainly a fascinating fantasy city (and an easy entry to any list of top fantasy cities), but arguably explored much better in the gaming materials than in the previous novels I'd read which were set there, which tended to reduce the place to just another generic metropolis and missed out on the city's more bonkers elements.
I still have a copy of the 1994 CITY OF SPLENDOURS D&D boxed set which comes with a ton of cardboard sheets and instructions you can use to build a model of a Waterdhavian neighbourhood, which is cool in an extremely geeky kind of way (I've never built mine and probably never will now).
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