Acacia: The War with the Mein (Acacia, Book 1) (original 2007; edition 2008)

You can read my review of Acacia on my blog (contains some spoilers): http://www.rulethewaves.net/blog/?p=2203 ( )

***Early book spoiler***
A very good read and well worth the price. David Durham tells a fantastic story about 4 royal siblings who are torn about when their kingdom is taken over. Each is thrown to different parts of the diverse kingdom and partake in very distinct lifestyles that transform them in unique ways.

The book is very well written and you get over 700 pages of story. The characters are developed well, but he could go further with their development. Some more detail about geography, relationships between peoples, the aspects of the cities, etc. would also be nice. ( )

The Akarans have ruled the Known World for twenty-two generations, but the wrongfully exiled Meins have a bit of a problem with that. They enact a take-over plot whose first action is assassinating the king. Suddenly his four children are flung to different parts of the Known World in exile where they will need to come to terms with who they are, who the Mein are, and the wrongs past generations of Akarans committed in order to help the Known World make a change for the better.

I have a big announcement to make. Huge even. THIS IS THE FIRST HIGH FANTASY BOOK I HAVE LOVED. There. I said it! And it’s true. First, although this primarily depicts a war, no side is depicted as pure evil or good. Second, the female characters are incredibly well-written. Third, the Known World is complex and eloquently imagined, yet clear and easy to understand. Finally, the storyline is complex. I could not predict what was going to happen next at any moment, really. The ending caught me completely by surprise, and I am baffled as to what Durham will be doing with the middle book of the trilogy. Baffled and impatient.

Overall, this is now the book I will hold up when people ask me what is good fantasy. It is what leaves me with hope for the genre that it can be more than pasty white men wishing for a patriarchal past of quivering ladies in waiting and knights fighting dragons. Fantasy can imagine a world where some things are better than ours, and yet other things are worse. It can be a reflection of our own world through a carnival mirror. Something that makes us think hard while getting lost. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for those things in their reading.

Check out my full review: http://wp.me/pp7vL-M1 ( )

The Known World has been ruled by Acacians for 500 years after an agreement with the Lothan Aklun whose help turned the tide of war for them. Their agreement is to ship a quota of child slaves each year. When King Leodan is attacked by a Mein assassin, he has just decided to do what he can to change the subjugation of the people. His children are shipped to separate safe havens, where they each grow up to be quite different than the sheltered royal children they left as. As with most "revolutions", the people who take over don't change the things that caused them to rebel in the first place, and people are just as unhappy as they were under Acacian rule. Nine years later, the royal children begin to be brought back together, and hope rests on the oldest son, who as a true wish for change.

Lots of world-building here, which makes for a rather slow beginning half. The language/writing of the novel is a bit formal, but appropriate for the setting. It IS a rather long start to a series, BUT ... as time went on, I found myself thinking of the characters and wondering what was going to happen next, which is always the sign of a good read. By the end, I felt as though I were a part of Acacia, with its betrayals, stunning reversals, adventures, and its straight and twisted loyalties. I will be pulling the next one out of my shelf for next month! ( )

Although I did not much like the style at the start of Acacia (too much info dump, not enough action), by the second third of the book, the pace picked up and the characters became interesting.

The world created is complex and confusing, and not only to the reader. None of the major characters has a clear vision of all the complex interactions which have shaped the world as it stands at the beginning of Acacia.

But the end of the book, much is still unknown to us and to them. Mystery creatures, magic which is rare and hard to quantify, drugs and slavery, and the question of who, or what, is actually the driving force behind Acacia. Certainly not the royal family. But they're trying to change that. ( )