Emerald Sea

Where Book 1 followed much more along the lines of rebuilding society from the ground up with a nice chunk of action, Book 2 takes us to the sea and concentrates around the first ever dragon carrier, this universe’s equivalent of an aircraft carrier. It’s another genuinely interesting concept that Ringo is playing with, and when put to the backdrop of politicking and scheming with and amongst the ocean-dwelling folk of this far-future Earth, it allows for an innovative and entertaining story. That said, this Book 2 just didn’t quite hit like Book 1 on a number of levels. I’m going to list them below and I expect it is going to sound like I didn’t enjoy this book all that much, but that simply isn’t the case (at least with regards to the main body of the novel). It was entertaining throughout. At no point was I bored or did I want to skip ahead, and to me that above all is the defining feature of a good novel. The two standout characters for me are Herzer as he slowly becomes a reluctant badarse (the best kind of badarse) and the Rabbit. The Rabbit is a fantastic character, and just the concept of a chaotic trickster with a preference for bloody slaughter wrapped up in a little floppy-eared bunny is brilliant. I liked the story, I’ll be continuing the series, but I did have issues with the book. Or more specifically, I had issues with missed opportunities in the main body and the odd novella tagged on at the end, as I’ll now elaborate on.

 First, having large parts of the story set under the waves within underwater societies is a fantastic angle to take. It allows for some truly original writing and the opportunities for creativity seem endless, but I feel that Ringo really didn’t push this aspect as far as it could have gone.  What we got to see were more like detailed snapshot of the Mer people and not the fully fleshed out society that they exist within. I had so many burning questions about how they lived their lives and ran their community, but I feel like only a few of these were answered. A big issue was that I never got any idea of scale. The Mer are supposed to be a major faction that the competing powers are attempting to woo, yet it felt like there were only a few hundred or maybe a couple thousands of them at max. From the weight given to gaining their allegiance, I initially thought that this was just one small offshoot of a vastly larger global population, but there didn’t seem to be a greater global populations that they belonged to. The Mer that we saw were the sum total of the Mer nation, or at least the particular Mer nation that the factions were so fixated on. Nor did the members of the Mer race seem like some sort of sub-aqua supermen, so I just couldn’t see how their relatively small numbers would have had that much of an impact on the surface war. I was also really looking forward to some truly epic scale underwater battles fought in three dimensions as opposed to the largely two dimensions of terrestrial combat. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of fighting and some incredibly well-written action scenes throughout the book, but I felt that we were given just a taste of something that could have been (considering Ringo’s proven ability to write combat scenes) uniquely awe inspiring. Again, what was there was good, but I just think he missed a trick.

The story itself was solid but did run a tad flat at times. There was one storyline which, by the time you get to the end of the book, actually didn’t achieve anything. As far as I could tell, all of the main storyline events would have proceeded in more or less the same fashion had those entire sections of the novel been cut. Our antagonists also felt a little more hollow than those from Book 1, just appearing to be bad for the simple fact that they liked being bad and the power being bad gave them without very much nuance. I like a bit more depth to my villains.

My next criticism of the book is the big one. Basically, this book was actually two books, with the second smaller novella tagged on at the end taking us to an entirely new set of characters (for the most part). The second part follows the daughter of one of those within the main body as she is kidnapped by the leader of New Destiny and forced to become a member of his harem. Now… I have some issues with this second story. When I pick a John Ringo novel (as I have done many times before) I am after some well-paced, well-written action and adventure, with plenty of combat, comradery, and clever storytelling. This novella at the end of the book however, while still well-written, was not that at all. I am sure there is an audience that would really appreciate this nuanced look into sexual slavery and how someone manages to survive such an ordeal, but that really wasn’t what I was looking for in this novel. Plus, the quantity of graphic sex scenes (at least towards the end) would have me almost saying that this novella could be classed as erotica. Tagging this completely different story to the end of the main novel that seems to follow an entirely different genera was a weird play to make, and honestly, I only finished this section because I knew the main character was going to be important in the later books. I didn’t really enjoy it, and although it did add to the overall storyline of the series, I think there could have been much better ways to integrate that information within the established structure that Ringo had already built for this series. The whole thing was just kind of odd, and frankly, it brought down my overall enjoyment of what was otherwise a great book.

As for narration, Tim Fannon is plenty good enough for the standard character interactions, with a wide range of voices and solid delivery. However, he seems to be lacking that special something at those moments of high stress. He delivers lines that are supposed to be shouted or impassioned with basically the same tone as if the characters involved were having a slightly heated debate, and at times it does undermine the building of tension.

Personal Score: 4.0 stars

Like the way I write a review? Then you might like the way I write a novel. Link to Book 1 in the Blood and Balance series below, or for more info on my book series click HERE.

Buy 'The Sage's Lot (Blood and Balance, Book 1)' here!