Roast Rant Review: The Third Eagle | R.A.MacAvoy

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The Blurb

A young warrior’s coming of age journey across space leads him to a vitally important—and mortally dangerous—mission.

When the warrior Wanbli came of age, he cast his lot among the stars and left the world where he’d been born. Left it, he thought, forever. His odyssey led him to one ship, then another, and to another still. It brought him face to face with the far-flung members of the universe’s Seven Sentient peoples. And, finally, it brought him to the colony ship Commitment. There, Wanbli learned the true purpose of his life—a mission so vital that it required risking the lives of everyone on the ship and the future of his home world. His mission meant returning to that world, but only if he could survive the deadly machinations of those who sought to stop him.

The Author

R. A. MacAvoy is a highly acclaimed author of imaginative and original science fiction and fantasy novels. Her debut novel, Tea with the Black Dragon, won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She has also written the Damiano trilogy, the chronicles of a wizard’s young son, set during an alternate history version of the Italian Renaissance; The Book of Kells; and Twisting the Rope, the highly acclaimed sequel to Tea with the Black Dragon. She is also the author of the beloved and much-praised Lens of the World trilogy.

The Breakdown

“Lessons Along a Minor String”

Chapter 1

We open on a set of poetic verses, though this is not a continued pattern through the rest of the book.

Intro our main character: Wanbli, shirtless, and the mud village, it states so twice, of Tawlin. A bunch of name dropping for location and setting up “hey look, this is a strange new planet” without enough depth to understand what is being mentioned. Descriptions are useful, especially if flora and fauna can be noted as such. Hello food descriptions for skin color, and tea with milk and sugar? Who introduced tea, milk, and sugar and from where? Are we a British off-world colony? Yes yes. Impeccable. Perfectly sculpted. Why not? Why not…

Setting up for a bunch of indigenous people portrayals. Well, this is uncomfortable. I knew this going into it. The coverart kind of tells you what’s up. I do remember reading this in my early teens and at that time thought the whole affair intriguing. Now though, with an eye to political correctness within fiction, this just comes off as a problematic choice.

Gum, a gun, a wallet and a leather pouch all hanging on a breachclot belt…suspension of disbelief is wobbly here.

WTF is Tawlin a place or a person? Wacaan is both people and person, but we’re pingponging back and forth here with a lot of low context descriptors.

Okay, ‘earth heritage’, so we have some context that the people here are descended from earth, that may or may not help. I’m still lost on Tawlin.

Let’s throw a bit of name dropping on drug usage and fetish sex into this and a drop of flat image vs. holographs. Well. As it stands, the rating on the book at least age wise stands at probably 18+, which means any 13 year old is going to get their hands on it and most of this will go over the heads (i.e. me when I first read this well over almost two decades ago).

I’ve hit on the word ‘very’ about 5 times now and I’m glaring at the book. Sigh.

A bit of quick action taken down to the slow-mo style.

Red man. Redman? Pardon me while I blink at that text and take some deep breaths. It’s in the book. It’s literally written in the book. Oh my…gahhh…oh and Tawlin is yellow. We’re…we’re going there…alrighty then, the author has gone that route. Save me, this was a bad decision to read.

Primitives!!!??? oh frack no

Nope. I’m noping this book. Got to page 20 and I’m just…nope.

The Review

The Review. What to say? I had to DNF this book. I remember reading it at the end of middle school or beginning of high school. It was in one of the school libraries. A) I have no idea why they stocked this book in the school when the refused to Stock Princess Bride, but whatever.

The opening is disjointed and racist, failing to hide under the veneer of sci-fi 30+ years after its publishing date.

That sucks. I remember liking the book, but remembering much of what it actually was about other than some guy going all over the galaxy doing cool things just so he could get a vasectomy reversed or something like that.

Got another book suggestion for me? I’m out already.

RT @chapelorahamm: I can’t wait to read what happens next in The Kavordian Library! – #scifi, #fantasy, #webseries #books

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