The Thousand Eyes

An enjoyable, if sometimes wobbly, follow-up to The Unspoken Name. Csorwe, Shuthmili, and Tal, together with some new faces, return to try to survive amidst gods, monsters, magic, and the ruins of an ancient snake vampire.

I'd be really curious to know if this was originally planned to be a trilogy rather than a duology. While I'm always glad to see someone shake up the tendency for fantasy books to fall into the trilogy mode, something about the pacing here plus a couple of seemingly dropped plot threads made me feel that we were getting a cut-down version of what A.K. Larkwood had intended. I also found the newly introduced teen character to be grating.

That said, this is still the kind of book that words like "rollicking" were show more invented for, with some gorgeously described fantastical landscapes and set pieces, and lots of characters who are fun to spend time with. I'll be looking forward to seeing what Larkwood does next. show less

Fascinating followup to the first book, which chronicled the adventures and love story of Csorwe and Shuthmili as they escaped the wizard who abused them. But this book starts with Csorwe’s body being taken over by a god—and then jumps fifteen years to find Shuthmili serving the god, hoping against hope to rescue Csorwe. As with the first book, some bad deals are made, some betrayals occur, and both the protagonists and their antagonists are complicated and self-justifying. I enjoyed it.

[b:The Unspoken Name|45046552|The Unspoken Name (The Serpent Gates, #1)|A.K. Larkwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1576631770l/45046552._SY75_.jpg|69749498] and [b:The Thousand Eyes|55077684|The Thousand Eyes (The Serpent Gates, #2)|A.K. Larkwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625074904l/55077684._SY75_.jpg|85876212] are very good fantasy novels but suffer through no fault of their own from a fatal flaw: they aren't The Locked Tomb series by [a:Tamsyn Muir|6876324|Tamsyn Muir|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1543423040p2/6876324.jpg]. (Funnily enough, the cover of [b:The Thousand Eyes|55077684|The Thousand Eyes (The Serpent Gates, #2)|A.K. show more Larkwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625074904l/55077684._SY75_.jpg|85876212] hardback I read includes a recommendation from her.) There are a lot of similarities that lead me to mentally classify the two Serpent Gates novels as 'the other lesbian necromancer books'. These include: a necromancer/swordswoman romance, characters getting possessed by gods, a villain who made himself into a god, a childish-seeming person who turns out to be a god, skeletons, and irreverent dialogue. Much as this was fun, it didn't quite have the same impact as in Muir's hands.

I found it easy to pick up who everyone was and what was happening in [b:The Thousand Eyes|55077684|The Thousand Eyes (The Serpent Gates, #2)|A.K. Larkwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625074904l/55077684._SY75_.jpg|85876212] despite not remembering that much from the previous book. The plot of the sequel proceeds in stages, with several time jumps, exciting twists, and unsettling acts of magic. There isn't much explanation of how magic works in this world, other than it seems to be derived from gods and skill is sometimes heritable. Compared with the intricate world building of fantasy series like [b:Foundryside|37173847|Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)|Robert Jackson Bennett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1520460880l/37173847._SY75_.jpg|58951160], I found this a bit too vague to be satisfying. The eerie and ruined settings were great, though. My clear favourite was the ocean-wood, a wonderfully atmospheric place that has previously appeared in my dreams. I also appreciated the giant snake and some excellent outfit descriptions.

I like the main characters... But they're not Gideon and Harrow. The goddess who schemes to possess a human body, then is very ambivalent about embodiment when she manages it, is particularly appealing. Sethennai, on the other hand, suffered from being described as charismatic by others but wasn't hugely interesting on the page. I enjoyed the plot... But it didn't utterly immerse me like The Locked Tomb does. Events didn't feel sufficiently drawn out to really move my emotions and the ending was if anything a little too neat and happy. However I'm effectively incapable of judging [b:The Thousand Eyes|55077684|The Thousand Eyes (The Serpent Gates, #2)|A.K. Larkwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625074904l/55077684._SY75_.jpg|85876212] entirely on its own merits and also prefer fantasy with more of a sci-fi sensibility. So I am likely being more critical than is really fair, as I had a good time reading it. Looking back at my review of [b:The Unspoken Name|45046552|The Unspoken Name (The Serpent Gates, #1)|A.K. Larkwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1576631770l/45046552._SY75_.jpg|69749498], I said almost exactly the same about that. show less

Hum… 3.25 stars, I think?

As much as I enjoyed the first book, I found myself a little conflicted about this one. There were some things that I loved! But there were some other things that threw me a little. Nothing I outright hated though, so that’s good.

I think… my biggest problem here was that it felt a little like a different story in some ways than the first one. I enjoyed the beginning a lot and was excited about the direction it was going, then… big plot twist and time jump, and a lot more of other and newer characters perspectives for pretty much the whole middle chunk of the book. So… the first third and the last act I loved… the middle dragged, for me. In some ways I liked what was going on in the middle, don’t show more get me wrong, but it was really jarring at first, and much slower paced, and in a lot of ways I wished it had cut some of it and moved to the third act much sooner and spent more time, there. I was also… again, not totally annoyed,but, slightly bummed to have spent so much more time with Tal’s pov than I expected he’s fine but he’s not my fav. I fell in love with the first one because of Csorwe, and her arc with her upbringing and gods nonsense, and she’s not a pov character hardly at all in this one. Which is a bummer. I did love how much we got of Suthmilli’s pov and I think she might’ve ended up my fav, all things considered. I just… idk. It was good and ambitious but the middle dragged for me where it felt like it could have easily been condensed down a bit. like, it almost feels like the entire thousand eyes stuff really didn’t need to last that long? And was kind of a red herring for Sethennai (OF COURSE) being the major asshole big bad in the end as we always knew he would).

I listened to the audiobook this time around, and this was a new to me narrator, but I enjoyed her performance. Not a ton of distinction in character voices (like, Csorwe, Oranna, and Tsereg all sound very similar with their “northern-esque accent”) but overall they did a decent job and I’d listen to another by them. I also will probably still keep an eye out for whatever AK Larkwood does next, and I do still rec this for people who want an ambitious fantasy series with a lot of cool world building, gods and goddesses being idiots, and a lot of queerness in all of the main characters. show less

This book was a great continuation of The Unspoken Name and Csorwe, Tal and the gang go through a lot in this novel. It took my brain about a quarter of the book to remember all of the things that happened in The Unspoken Name, and once my brain caught up, we were off to the races. I like that a lot of story lines were finished in this book in case this is a duology, we are not all left wondering what happened to character x.

I found Larkwood's writing, from both a structural and communicative standpoint, to be much improved from her last attempt. This is a genuinely solid book with a much smoother and natural feel and style than the first in the duology. The characters were even more engaging and their development mature and meaningful. I'm interested to see what Larkwood does next.

3.5