Cold Steel

This is a very satisfying conclusion to a rather well crafted trilogy. I'm not usually one who sets a lot of store on how a book ends. Books that hinge on how the thing ends seem to be wasting the chance to be worth reading on every page. The Spiritwalker series could have ended successfully before the final few chapters w/ Cat keeping her secrets and no one being the wiser. Yet the close and denouement were really cleverly done and wrapped up a lot of plot strings.

I'll be watching Kate Elliott. I was really impressed with this series.

My feelings for Kate Elliott's Spiritwalker trilogy have been all over the map, from boredom to fangirling to intense admiration to irritation. Most emotions it's capable for me to feel about a book, I've felt somewhere along the way through this series. Though I'm not entirely satisfied with the way that Cold Steel concluded everything, the Spiritwalker Trilogy stands out in my mind as one of my recent favorites, and will remain a much loved part of my collection. Though I do not usually do this, my Cold Steel review will be spoiler-free for the series.

The biggest strength of this trilogy is Catherine (Cat). She's a plucky, intelligent, clever, sneaky, passionate, impulsive heroine, and I love her to bits. Certainly, at times, she can show more be quite frustrating, unwilling to look past her own stubbornness, and she often races into danger without a thought. Also, she's no sweet innocent; she will do bad or wild things, and she does not necessarily regret them. Cat is a powerful heroine in just about every meaning of the word.

Even better, Elliott does not fall into the trap that so many authors do of writing only one strong female character, afraid that empowering women in general would lessen the heroine's specialness. Actually, pretty much every woman encountered within the pages of this trilogy is strong in one way or another, or perhaps more than one way. Cat's cousin, Bee, for example, isn't a fighter, but she can talk people into just about anything. Women are warriors, rulers, spiritual advisers, lawyers, and forces to be reckoned with. Also, these women are sexual beings, if they choose to be; the series is very sex positive, without a hint of slut-shaming. If you're tired of epic fantasy where women are marginalized, Elliott's series will be an icy breeze during a fire mage attack.

Of course, the fact that Elliott wrote one of my favorite fictional couples doesn't hurt anything either. Cat and Vai have such powerful chemistry, and so much respect for one another, though it takes time to grow. They fight constantly, even in their most loving of moments, but they do not desire to change one another and they work through their relationship problems together. And, yes, they do have problems, as any couple composed of two such fiery people would.

Kate Elliott's world building also deserves vast praise. She weaves together the mortal world and the spirit world into a visually stunning picture, all set in an alternate history version of our world. My memories of Cold Magic are too fuzzy for me to fully understand where that world diverged with this one, but I know it was cool. The cold and fire mages, the spirit courts, and the dragons are all conceptually fascinating and well-established.

Where the series lags, however, is in the pacing. Throughout Cold Steel especially, I had trouble keeping track of the flow of time. Partly, this is intentional, since time does flow differently in the spirit world, but that's not where the problem really came from. I also feel like the concluding volume packed too much plot into the almost 600 pages, because I feel like characterization was not quite as strong, relying on what came before, rather than further developing the cast. As such, the rampant feels I had in Cold Fire were largely nonexistent. Cold Steel was an uneven read for me, with portions keeping me on the edge of my seat, and others just to be got through for the good stuff.

This first read through did leave some elements to be desired, but I also know that there are things I missed. Though I don't keep too many of my books once I've read them, I'll be keeping this series, and I plan to reread it down the road, hopefully picking up on even more of the positive points than I noticed this time through. show less

The pacing was wildly uneven and a better editor would have whittled this book down by at least a hundred pages, improving both the dialogue and the prose. (Did we need so many descriptions of Vai's clothing, of Cat doing Vai's laundry, of the fabric of Vai's dash jackets? We did not. It started to feel as if Elliott had mistaken clothing descriptions for characterisation.) Both as a book and as a conclusion to a trilogy, I liked Cold Steel well enough, but didn't love it, which I suppose must be my conclusion for the trilogy as a whole. I think Elliott is the kind of author whose books I'd like well enough to check out if I spotted them in the library, but not enough to buy.

I find myself somewhat ambivalent about this book and the whole series. There are some great things--the characters, the twisty and unflinching nuance with which the central theme of freedom is addressed, a really interesting world. And then there are some things that I didn't really think worked overall.

My biggest frown-inducer is the overall plot. I think broadly I'd have to describe these books as "adventures on the road to finding safety and security" which is absolutely enough to drive a book, even a trilogy, especially when spear-headed by a character as interesting, dynamic and pivotal as Cat. However, the focus in this book on James Drake as A Big Bad really distracted from the thematic and character arcs. Now, in a way, James show more Drake personifies issues of personal and general freedom for Cat, as well as just generally being a great example of the abuse of power. But personally, I found him so parenthetical to the struggles of the book that I felt like this book pulled itself apart along its tension lines, rather than having multiple conflicts hauling together to tighten tension.

Overall, plot and pacing were my problems with this series, as it sprawls delightfully, but also distractingly, and everything from a line-by-line to a broader arc was given just a little too much slack (charming slack; elegantly phrased slack; slack nonetheless) that made an otherwise intriguing and enthralling book sadly easy to put down. show less

Honestly, when you are fighting for your life, are you really commenting on how intricate the nearest man's clothes are and how good he looks in them?

Cold Steel is the last book in the Spiritwalker trilogy. Those who have read Cold Magic and Cold Fire are by now well acquainted with the alternate earth imagined by Kate Elliot. In her world, the Roman Empire is still in existence and people live in a feudal state with Princes and Mage houses controlling them. People are extremely aware of the spirit world, which once a year unleashes the wild hunt to gather the souls of those who are going to die in the following year. Nothing is stable in this world, as the people are trying to overthrow the regimes which rule them. Cat, the protagonist, must not only deal with the political upheaval and war but the legacy of her heritage as the daughter of the Master of the Hunt.

Like all novels in show more this trilogy, I firmly believe that Elliot could easily have dropped 100-150 pages and not lost a thing in terms of the story. I often found myself wishing that she would just get to the point. It also felt very disconnected, as the characters were repeatedly presented with problems to over come and then quickly did so, only to then be thrown into yet another issue. These problems didn't really seem to connect and it felt like we moved from one action scene to another.

One of the things I love about this series is the fact that nearly all of the character are multi-racial in some form. As a person of colour, I am used to seeing myself erased in science fiction and to see Elliot's passion for including us really did present me with some hope. This inclusion however did not extend to GLBT people, which while normal, is never acceptable. We were introduced to a disabled character but because of her relative youth, she was never actively a part of the major plot and instead served to bind Vai to the Mansa. It was however encouraging to see Cat advocate that she should get a proper cane as befitting her size, as well as an education.

As a protagonist, Cat is extremely strong. With lines like "It would take a strong man not to speak of harnesses," in reference to the suggestion that a man should control her, there is no doubt that Cat refused to be bound by an sort of gender convention. Cat had no problem killing when the need arose, her handy sword always be her side, or risking herself for the people she cared about. It however all fell apart when it came to Vai. Suddenly, this woman who walked the spirit world, punched sharks and escaped ghouls became a quivering mass of jelly. Yes, we get that Cat loves Vai but was it necessary for her to obsesses about his clothing, or lose all conscious thought looking at him without a shirt? Cat constantly in Vai's service, lugging his clothing around (because heaven forbid something happen to one of his precious dash jackets), or mending the blasted things because he just had to look his best. I don't remember one instance of Vai doing anything similar for her. Cat defied gender boundaries when it come to the social world but the minute it came to her relationship with Vai, gender roles were firmly and most irritatingly in place.

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Quite a good read but there were parts of it that didn't quite flow as well as I'd expect from Kate Elliott. The story finishes but isn't quite resolved, the character's story is resolved but the world isn't and I'm both pleased and somewhat displeased with that. It does leave openings for further stories in this world. More real-world than many fantasy novels, I felt that there was a history and a future in this world and that Cat and her friends improved the future of it and found ways to make life better for as many as they could and that they would continue to do so.

I liked the action girl of Cat and Bee's use of words and I found it good.