When reading The Nine by Tracy Townsend, I found myself ruminating on religion in fantasy. Her take – a religion dedicated to god as an experimental scientist taking notes on his creation – piqued this engineer’s interest. It ended well with ominous overtones for the future of the god’s experiment. In The Fall, the ominous overtones are put into play. Rowena joins Anselm, and the Alchemist on a trip into their past as they seek out a way to keep the Grand Experiment safe.
TL;DR
From the Publisher
An apothecary clerk and her ex-mercenary allies travel across the world to discover a computing engine that leads to secrets she wasn’t meant to know–secrets that could destroy humanity.
Eight months ago, Rowena Downshire was a half-starved black market courier darting through the shadows of Corma’s underside. Today, she’s a (mostly) respectable clerk in the Alchemist’s infamous apothecary shop, the Stone Scales, and certainly the last girl one would think qualified to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders a second time. Looks can be deceiving.
When Anselm Meteron and the Alchemist receive an invitation to an old acquaintance’s ball–the Greatduke who financed their final, disastrous mercenary mission fourteen years earlier–they’re expecting blackmail, graft, or veiled threats related to the plot to steal the secrets of the Creator’s Grand Experiment. They aren’t expecting a job offer they can’t refuse or a trip halfway across the world to rendezvous with the scholar whose research threw their lives into tumult: the Reverend Doctor Phillip Chalmers.
Escorting Chalmers to the Grand Library of Nippon with her mismatched mercenary family is just a grand adventure to Rowena until she discovers a powerful algebraic engine called the Aggregator. The Aggregator leads Rowena to questions about the Grand Experiment she was never meant to ask and answers she cannot be allowed to possess. With her reunited friends, Rowena must find a way to use the truths hidden in the Grand Library to disarm those who would hunt down the nine subjects of the Creator’s Grand Experiment, threatening to close the book on this world.
Sequels
The more that I review, the more I think it’s almost unfair to rate a sequel. Sequels aren’t considered solely on their own merits; they’re always assessed in relation to the first book. Second books must clear two obstacles to achieve success. First, they have to clear the expectations set by the first book. And unfortunately not just scrape by them; no, sequels have to effortlessly clear the level set in the first book. If not, it seems as if the work has suffered even when equivalent to the first in the series. Second, the sequel has to bring something fresh and new to the world building. This is especially true for books set in weird and fantastical locales. So much is dependent on the first book that reviewing the second can occasionally be covering familiar ground. Do I cover aspects that carried over to this novel that didn’t seem right for the first review? What new gaze can I bring to the sequel as a book standing as its own work?
The Fall cleared both of those obstacles easily. With such a wonderful world introduced in The Nine, The Fall didn’t feel as surprising in its scenery; though, it did occasionally surprise. Instead, the freshness came from new locales – Lemarcke and Nippon – while the ‘newness’ of the book came from how Ms. Townsend fleshed out more of her world. Minor characters from the first book are given depth while new characters are introduced to make the world larger and more complex. In all, this sequel delivered on all my expectations while setting me up for the next book.
Story
The Fall is set months after the events in The Nine. The Alchemist has nearly recovered; Rowena has stability in her life; and schemes are afoot in the city. But for Rowena, Anselm, and the Alchemist, the adventure lies not in the city but in a journey. For Anselm and the Alchemist, it’s a chance to relive old glories and dwell in past but not healed agonies. The three are headed to Nippon in search of answers about the Grand Experiment. Meanwhile, the city Lanyani are scheming against its residents, and the Aigamuxa are caught between the humans and the trees.
The Aigamuxa
In The Fall, we get more of the Aigamuxa perspective. We learn more about their society and its structure. A sympathetic eye was cast to the creatures in this book, and I appreciated that they weren’t just mindless/heartless monsters. I don’t know that the Aigamuxa characters from the last book were redeemed, but in The Fall the species is treated fairly. I appreciate that the monsters are given depth and shown to have variation in personality. In this book, they ceased to be monsters. I’m more fascinated by the creatures now. Their eyeballs reside in their heels, and evolution-wise, this seems like a bad idea. So, how did they come to be with such an odd physiology?
Their representation on the cover is a thing of beauty. These creatures are intriguing and my favorite fantasy race of the past two years.
Pacing
This book suffered from pacing issues. Some of the sections, particularly those back in the city, moved much faster than the main story. The main story picked up pace near the end of the book and ended on a bang.
The faster sections of the The Fall were also shorter than Rowena’s portion of the book. These sections were good but minimally explored.