false 2654980 0765320428 9780765320421 33 17 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2654980.The_Court_of_the_Air 435114 Stephen Hunt 401 144 3 0 false Sat Jul 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Dec 15 16:37:36 -0800 2008 Sat Jul 25 23:14:21 -0700 2009
This steampunk/fantasy book (for lack of a better genre distinction) is full to bursting with great ideas. From major, major plot points to little throwaway moments, almost every individual idea is something very cool and different--many of them are clear combinations of older ideas, but done in ways most people would never have thought of. Unfortunately this does make the book feel, at times, like just a succession of neat stuff without a lot else there. The plot is very convoluted and hard to follow, and unfortunately it seems, by the end, that it wasn't quite an original enough plot to warrant being so confusing (not that I would have had a problem with its originality otherwise).

Character development also seems to go a bit by the wayside. Basically, how interesting a character in the book is seems to be inversely proportionate to how much of the book they're in--it's the ones we only see a bit of that are the most compelling. Molly and Oliver, the main characters, are kinda dull with no real arc... except when Oliver's personality does a 180 thanks to some magic, taking him in a direction that would have been much more interesting if the change had happened organically.

All this serves to lower my rating to 3 stars, but only barely (I would've liked 3 and a half) because most of the time, Court of the Air is very good, and had me riveted. But somehow whenever I was done, it was difficult to get myself to pick it up again. However, seeing how wonderfully Hunt has put together the world here, I definitely look forward to future books, and hope that some of the other things necessary to a good book will be tightened up.]]>