The Wretched of Muirwood

The Wretched of Muirwood isn’t a super long book, but then it doesn’t need to be. If it were much longer then you would have seen the fairly concise events of the novel dragged out a little too much. If you’ve read any of my other reviews, you’ll know that I’m not the biggest fan of slow pacing, and there were certainly points where I contemplated giving up on this book in favour of something a little more entertaining, but I stuck with it and didn’t regret that fact that I did. This book may not be my particular cup of tea, but for the audience that I believe it is aimed for, it is most certainly written well. So, on to specifics.

The story follows Lia, an orphan raised within the confines of Muirwood abbey who shortly into the novel is given the responsibility to hide and care for an injured squire (of sorts) who is thrust upon her. The story then unfolds as the true nature of her charge (Colvin) slowly comes to light and the forces hunting him make themselves known. It’s a simple story, with fairly little happening until about halfway through the book, and even then, there is only a scattering of high-intensity scenes strewn about a middlingly paced backdrop. I wasn’t blown away by this book at any point really, but it did keep chugging away with enough content to keep me just about interested. However, this book certainly does have one very strong suit, and that is the characters themselves.

Lia is extremely well written. Because of the slow progression of the book we are gifted with enough time to really get to know this thirteen-year-old in a way that few other books manage. Lia isn’t some masterfully skilful adept or mystical chosen one (at least not yet). She is just a girl who has some fairly strong abilities that she has been unable to truly test… until now. She has strengths and she has weaknesses, and through the exploration of her character we are left truly knowing who this girl is by then end of the book. This was done very well, as was the development of Colvin. The young man on the run starts off appearing as a bit of a pompous prig but slowly simmers into a genuinely good young man. And the beauty of this transformation is less a change in his character and more a change in the way we perceive him and the ways he allows himself to be perceived by Lia as they become accustom to one another. Again, very human characteristics and extremely well executed.

The magic system in the novel is simplistic, but what is there is explained in fairly concise detail. I’m a stickler for logical magic systems, and although this one may be a bit wish-washy as to what it can do and how it exactly works, we are given enough explanation of what outwardly appears very vague that by the end we get a decent grasp of how it sort of works. It’s meant to be vague, and so I can’t fault it for that. The main villain in this story, the sheriff, is a fairly despicable bastard; just the right amount of creepy with the right amount evil. He isn’t some superpowered adversary. He’s just a scheming, power-hungry arsehole with a grudge to settle and an eye for the macabre. Again, for what he is, he is very well written.

The story overall isn’t particularly complex, which is both a strength and a weakness to some degree, but the one thing this book painfully lacks is action. I think there is one, maybe two fights in the entire book that have any description more than ‘they fought and person X lost’, and considering that there is a battle in the book, this is a little bit of a bummer. I like a good fight scene, and this book just seemed to gloss over them like they were actively trying to avoid them.

All in all, this book just wasn’t written for someone with my particular tastes. For those that like a slow-paced exploration of humanity’s strengths and weaknesses, then you will no doubt enjoy this book a lot more than I. There was nothing here for me to really dislike, but also nothing for me to sink my enjoyment into. Much like this review, my opinion of this book is just kind of ‘meh’.

As for narration, the writing style of the book felt like everyone was speaking proper English, with little colloquial flare, and the performance matched this. I believe Kate Rudd read the book exactly in the manner in which it was written, and so I’ll say that it takes a lot of talent to get across the slight awkwardness that the patterns of speech seemed to convey at times.

Personal Score: 3 stars

Profession Score: 3.5 stars