Retribution Falls (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #1) in Fantasy-Faction.com

Apr 30, 2016 Hilary rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

Started this because several trusted friends kept nagging me to read it, although pirates and airships not my usual choice and I admit being reluctant. How could I be so wrong.

Fast action, excitement, unusual and intriguing characters who make a strange and not particularly comfortable mix, as the crew of the Ketty Jay. The Ketty Jay became a character in her own right to me and I worried about her safety and survival at all times. Already attached to most of the crew as well.

Good selection of ...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Patremagne rated it it was amazing

I don't read sci-fi very often. It's not that I don't like it, it's that fantasy tends to be more alluring. This time, I wanted a break from the farmer who saves the world and the Bridgeburners.

Retribution Falls is an outstanding steampunk novel that brings you on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. There are some novels with lines that make me smile due to their humor, but there were several in Retribution Falls that made me genuinely laugh out loud. I laugh a lot in life, but something needs to I don't read sci-fi very often. It's not that I don't like it, it's that fantasy tends to be more alluring. This time, I wanted a break from the farmer who saves the world and the Bridgeburners.

Retribution Falls is an outstanding steampunk novel that brings you on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. There are some novels with lines that make me smile due to their humor, but there were several in Retribution Falls that made me genuinely laugh out loud. I laugh a lot in life, but something needs to be truly funny for me to laugh at it while reading in a novel outside of a smirk. You follow the Ketty Jay's crew through their ups and downs, sharing in their feelings of dread when something goes wrong (and trust me, things go wrong), and you feel their glee in victory.

We begin the story with a motley crew of people who aren't entirely likable off the bat and who have a dark, hidden past and intend to keep it that way. Throughout the story, Wooding fleshes out the characters more and more until, through their hardships, they bond with eachother, sharing their past and how they ended up on the Jay. Wooding weaves the backstories so well in that while they're difficult to connect with in the way that gets you thinking "I know exactly how he/she feels", rather he gets you thinking "wow, that's pretty fucked up, but I can imagine how I'd feel in his position". Wooding takes these past experiences that most readers can't connect via personal experience but instead connects the reader with the emotion itself.

Retribution Falls can be read as a standalone due to the fact that there's no cliffhanger, but that will certainly not deter me from reading further into the adventures of the Ketty Jay's crew. Rarely do I find a novel that wills me to read more of the series after such a tidy ending. Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: The Final Empire was an outstanding piece of work, but I felt no drive to read the Well of Ascension. Chris Wooding has me eager for more in the Black Lung Captain. 5 stars for an outstanding piece of work. ...more

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Mar 24, 2015 Tom Owens rated it really liked it

"Firefly in novel form".

That is how Retribution Falls was pitched to me on the shelves of Waterstones and that just about sold it to me. There will be others out there like me who fondly remember Joss Whedon's seminal and thoroughly too short-lived TV series Firefly. Anything that reminds me of this is a good thing in my book and I was keen to give this a whirl.

Retribution Falls is the first in a series of (so-far) four books detailing the adventures of Darian Frey and his crew aboard the Ketty "Firefly in novel form".

That is how Retribution Falls was pitched to me on the shelves of Waterstones and that just about sold it to me. There will be others out there like me who fondly remember Joss Whedon's seminal and thoroughly too short-lived TV series Firefly. Anything that reminds me of this is a good thing in my book and I was keen to give this a whirl.

Retribution Falls is the first in a series of (so-far) four books detailing the adventures of Darian Frey and his crew aboard the Ketty Jay. The setting is very similar to Whedon's series and it is obvious where Wooding has got at least some of his inspiration. For those who aren't familiar with Firefly here goes; it is a steampunk-type setting with flying vehicles, a similar level of technological advancement as our world (guns, computers, and a hint of mystery and magic thrown in for good measure.

The world described is typical of this genre; a slightly over-bearing government, some evidence of religious skull-duggery, the majority of people just trying to live day-to-day and a seemingly endless collection of towns and cities with names like "Scarwater" where the more nefarious members of society live. It feels like a sci-fi version of the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy and, in fact, the story embraces these piratical elements wholeheartedly.

Wooding does manage to create an interesting framework in which to introduce the characters and the background detail he brings to the world shows that he has more to divulge in later tales. There is a fair amount of showing you the bigger picture (or at least hinting) and certainly there is plenty more going on for us to want to explore beyond this book.

Frey and his crew are similarly typical of this type of setting. Well meaning mostly but morally ambiguous at times, everyone has their own story and their own reasons for being where they are. Trust is in short supply and it is generally your classic ragtag bunch of misfits who manage to come together when needed for the common good. Again there are striking parallels between Wooding's characters here and some of Whedon's Firefly creations but that isn't necessarily a bad thing as manages to give them a sense of depth and gritty realism. No-one feels particularly underused or there for reasons which don't seem to fit and he has pieced the element together nicely.

The story itself is nothing too original but has its moments and it works very nicely within the setting. It clips along at a decent rate, I cracked through this book in a weekend which usually tells you that I was engrossed and desperate to keep finding out more about the characters and the world they inhabit.

This was as advertised. If you like Firefly then I think you will LOVE this book. If you haven't seen Firefly but enjoy "space adventures" then you will still really enjoy this I think. Well written, excellently paced and with interesting and well developed characters - I'll definitely be following up with the further adventures of the Ketty Jay soon.

Verdict: 4.5 stars out of 5 ...more

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Mar 02, 2014 Laura Hughes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Retribution Falls (book #1 of the Ketty Jay series) is fantasy with a few SF elements to it, which is quite adventurous reading for me (I don’t usually wander far outside of sword and sorcery/medieval-type fantasy). I think the fact that it was different really helped my enjoyment of it, as I’ve found a lot of the ‘traditional’ fantasy I’ve been reading has started to feel a little stale.

I read a lot of this book on my commute to and from work, and other books I’ve read recently have suffered fo Retribution Falls (book #1 of the Ketty Jay series) is fantasy with a few SF elements to it, which is quite adventurous reading for me (I don’t usually wander far outside of sword and sorcery/medieval-type fantasy). I think the fact that it was different really helped my enjoyment of it, as I’ve found a lot of the ‘traditional’ fantasy I’ve been reading has started to feel a little stale.

I read a lot of this book on my commute to and from work, and other books I’ve read recently have suffered for this, partly because the structure of the story doesn’t stand up to being read in little chunks. Retribution Falls was actually great for this kind of reading: the characters spend a lot of time hopping from place to place, never doing any one thing for too long, and as such there are lots of short sequences and well-structured chapters that made it easy to just pick up the book and carry on from where I left off.

The characters were a bit hit and miss for me, and I didn’t feel like I engaged with them as much as I’d hoped too. I’d pretty much expected ‘Locke Lamora on an airship’, so it’s no wonder Wooding’s characters didn’t quite live up to my expectations (then again, even the last Scott Lynch book didn’t live up to my expectations, so maybe the problem lies with me . . .). The main character here, airship captain and smuggler Darian Frey, is likeable enough, but not quite as roguish or interesting as the blurb suggests, and I actually found myself more invested in the secondary characters, mainly Crake and Jez, than in Frey. Even they didn’t feel fleshed-out enough, though. I think all the characters were lacking depth in one way or another: it felt to me like I was playing an RPG, and the characters were ‘companions’ who eventually revealed something about themselves depending on what you said to them. I also found it highly unbelievable that Frey had spent so much time with these characters before the events of the book, yet was only now starting to care about them enough to take an interest in them.

Criticism aside, I enjoyed reading the book, and am looking forward to getting hold of the second one in the series sooner rather than later. ...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Victoria Hooper rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, magic, paranormal, steampunk, pirates

Retribution Falls is a really fun story. Really fun. Pirates, airships, a steampunkish feel, magic, demons, adventure, conspiracy... it has all the elements that let you know you’re in for a quick, exciting read. It’s an extremely fast paced book, barely pausing at any point for filler or downtime, and yet there are a surprising amount of back stories thrown in, all of them interesting. Chris Wooding is an expert at worldbuilding, slipping in facts and fascinating details that give such a vivid
Retribution Falls is a really fun story. Really fun. Pirates, airships, a steampunkish feel, magic, demons, adventure, conspiracy... it has all the elements that let you know you’re in for a quick, exciting read. It’s an extremely fast paced book, barely pausing at any point for filler or downtime, and yet there are a surprising amount of back stories thrown in, all of them interesting. Chris Wooding is an expert at worldbuilding, slipping in facts and fascinating details that give such a vivid feeling of the world, without ever slowing down the plot or distracting from the story.

The rag-tag crew of the Ketty Jay will draw inevitable comparisons with the TV series Firefly. The book has a similar kind of roguish-twinkle feel to Firefly; they’re pirates, but they’re not the really bad kind of pirates, and there’s something unavoidably lovable about their underdog position and their attempts to stay ahead of everyone who’s out to get them. The characters in Retribution Falls can be a little one-note – they’re a character type and in general they stick to it – but the back stories here do add a little more depth to certain people. In particular I liked Crake, the daemonist who aids the crew with his daemon-based magic, and Jez, the new navigator and the ship’s only woman. I found these two the most human of the characters, and I really felt for Crake. The more minor characters were less explored but did add some tension and humour. I liked the doctor the best of the side-character bunch and would like to learn more about him in later books.

The captain, Darian Frey, was a hard character to like, but felt like a very honest portrayal of the kind of man that might end up in his position. He’s always running away, always trying to find someone else to blame for his problems. There were points where I became very frustrated with him, and other points where I honestly hoped Draken would capture him and the rest of the crew would get away. However, though Darian is often unlikeable, his slightly car-crash approach to life is fascinating to read about.

As the book goes on, most of the crew members begin to reveal a darker side, aspects that make the reader question whether they are really the good guys. This isn’t explored very deeply in this book; we’re still supposed to want them to come out on top, but I’m hoping this may be touched on a bit more later in the series. The book also succeeds in making the reader feel sympathy for Draken, the woman chasing down the Ketty Jay, though it perhaps succeeded a little too well with me. There were points where I honestly wanted her to win, but then, perhaps that was the point. This is a book about pirates, and I like that lines of morality were hard to draw. No-one should feel like they are entirely the good or bad guys here.

With an interesting storyline involving conspiracy, pirates and murder, memorable characters, action, plenty of humour, adventure, airships, daemon-magic, and a malevolent ship’s cat, Retribution Falls is a quick, fun read. There isn’t really anything surprising in the book, with some elements being quite predictable, but it’s done so well there is a great amount of satisfaction in how the events roll out. There is a lot about this world that I love, and I’m looking forward to exploring more of it with the Ketty Jay’s crew in later books.

I listened to this as an audiobook, so wanted to quickly mention the narrator, Rupert Degas, who does an absolutely fantastic job and really brings the book to life. Each character felt pitch-perfect to me, and his reading combined with Chris Wooding's excellent writing kept me engrossed throughout. I'll be looking for more of Rupert Degas' work too!

This review also appears on my blog.
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