Sophie Masson

TRINITY is Book 1 of the Kuldun Code Trilogy, the second book being not far away if memory serves correct. Set in modern Russia, Sophie Masson has certainly involved a wonderful sense of place and culture in this book:

"They'd left a mild gray London spring morning and emerged into a Moscow afternoon so bright blue that it seemed painted on with a lavish brush. Everything had culture-shocked her, from the sublime to the ordinary: the candy-striped domes of St Basil's cathedral flaunted show more against the intense sky, Red Square vast as a rolling stone plain, wide streets strung with garlands of lights, weird little railway kiosks like tiny general stores, impassive people whose faces she didn't know how to read. And most of all, the barbed wire look of Cyrillic script fencing her off from any real understanding of what was going on."

The sense of the place, and the look and feel of a stranger in that unknown, untranslated difference is really well done through-out this book. Helen has never been here before, and knows little of the place and the people, although her mother speaks fluent Russian and is used to the culture and the people. The idea that the mythical weaves its way through the people and the place is also believable and contributes overall to the sense of "other" that TRINITY is obviously looking to build.

But within that, and even allowing for a certain leeriness for anything magical, paranormal or fantastical on this reader's part, there are too many holes in other elements in this book to allow the good elements to override the less convincing. Particularly the set up of Helen and Alexey as outsiders, and the building of this supposed intrigue that they solve together, which feels contrived and lacking veritas.

On the one hand Helen, she of the lovelorn, "he done me wrong" sad and lost girl; and on the other Alexey, the young Russian heir to the dark and mysterious business founded by his father. She's sad, withdrawn, docile - he's ethereal, idealistic and somewhat naive. And stinking rich. Of course these two will set eyes on each other, declare their undying love so quickly it's a wonder they've worked out how to spell each other's names, let alone be drawn together in love, business, mystery and the whole darn thing. That's not to say that's never going to happen anywhere, but everything - every single bit of character trait, behaviour, background is screaming "this is what will happen" from the second the mysterious sunglass wearing boy appears.

Once they do pair up however, the reason for Helen's existence in the whole book becomes increasingly vague. Given her tendency to mope about you can't help but wonder what she's doing there at all, especially as her role as soppy outsider means she's not really empowered to actually get involved or do a lot. Not helped by her spending a lot of time hanging around waiting whilst Alexey's off doing secret men's business of some kind. But then both of them are strangely passive, as is the whole "sudden love of their lives thing". It's all a bit syrupy, soppy gazing and mooning and generally being all... well bleagghhh. Which was not particularly realistic or convincing given the speed of the attraction and the supposed tense times in which they exist.

Having said all of that, if you stick with it, the later part of the book does improve. The pace picks up, there's less hanging around waiting, and the central characters seem to be slightly less wishy washy. Even the magical / folkloric aspects take a higher profile, providing more context and sense to the entire thing. TRINITY is probably a book for fans of paranormal / magic and romance with a bit of intrigue, rather than crime fiction fans alone. It's definitely going to be one of those books that really works for some readers, and does not at all for others.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-trinity-sophie-masson show less

I really, really wanted to like this book, but it just fell flat for me - and I love the Beauty and the Beast story! Despite an intriguing beginning, the plot started to go astray about half-way through, when Natasha and Ivan (Beauty and her beast) are separated and Natasha must journey across many lands to find him - which takes up the last half of the novel. My problems is that I didn't feel Natasha had really fallen in love (even through she made sure to declare she had) at the point when show more she starts fighting to find her man. It made the relationship between the two main characters feel weak and the one of the best parts of the Beauty and Beast tale is the romance, which this book lacks, since the two main characters spend half the book apart. show less

A K-6 fantasy novel with workmanlike prose and paint-by-numbers plot development whose main distinguishing characteristic is its setting. Jayangan's parallels to modern day Indonesia are so obvious as to make one wonder why Masson bothered with them at all. Indeed, the novel would have benefited greatly had it been set in the real world, but unfortunately Masson is attempting to have her cake and eat it too. The value of religious tolerance lies at the crux of this novel, but by setting this show more moralizing in a imaginary Indonesia instead of the actual country, Masson avoids confronting difficult truths about religious intolerance as it actually exist in the world, to say nothing of what is really needed to overcome it. To put it another way, xenophobic religious fanaticism is surely far easier to triumph over when one has a host of magical artefacts and powerful supernatural beings at one's disposal that can come to the rescue whenever purely human urges like compassion and empathy fail, than through "mere" human effort alone. Young children encountering fantasy for the first time will find this story compelling, but it's likely to fall flat for readers even slightly familiar with the genre (to say nothing of readers with Indonesian/Melayu language skills, for whom key characters' roles will be telegraphed by their names from the get-go). The bottom line is that an intriguing concept underpins this book; it's just too bad that its execution doesn't live up to its promise. Snow, Fire, Sword would have been a far better novel had it been either a straight fantasy romp in an unusual setting or a real life parable, but it doesn't manage to succeed at being both. show less

DNF at 35%. I felt as if very little had happened except for a great many conversations in an overblown gothic romance style. And treatment of the female character--who I thought would be a main character and who certainly has one of the main POVs--is passive and adrift after a bad breakup, until she instantly falls in love and becomes, if possible, even more passive as nearly everyone condescends to her.

I really wanted to like this book. It had me at Russian paranormal, and I even found the show more gothic romance style dialogue fun at the beginning. I intend to put this book aside and maybe try again later, but for right now I'm done. show less