jaderabbit's Full Review: Garth Nix - The Seventh Tower: Above the Veil Boo...
In a world with no sunlight, all light comes from Sunstones, magical gems controlled by spells. In the Castle, sunstones denote status and confer power. The Seventh Tower: The Fall begins the story of Tal, a Chosen child of the Orange Order who must find a Sunstone to replace the one that disappeared with his father. Without the influence of a strong Sunstone, Tal's ailing mother will die, and life will become hard for Tal and his younger brother and sister. An influential enemy blocks Tal at every legitimate channel, leaving him no choice but to forge a new path to his family's salvation. The Fall presents an interesting story and a number of novel concepts, but its abrupt ending and the proposed structure of Lucasbooks's Seventh Tover series pushes this book into the "light reading" category.
The Chosen are segregated into castes marked by prismatic colors, with the Empress ruling from Violet and the unfortunates Red in danger of dropping off the societal scale and jaining Underfolk servant caste. I found the color caste system novel--yet so intuitive, I can't imagine why I haven't seen it before.
Light figures into every equation--as does shadow. Children of the Chosen carry shadowguards: silent, shapeless, magical beings bonded to their natural shadow. Shadowguards assist in magic and in the everyday rough-and-tumble of a child's life, but adult command more powerful allies, the animal-like Spiritshadows.
After attempting every accepted path towards a Sunstone and meeting only with frustration, Tal climbs the Red Tower in search of one. When he plunges from it, he plunges from the world he knows and into the barren land dominated by the warlike Icecarls. Nix devotes as much attention to the Icecarls as to the Chosen and sets up the ambitious warrior-girl Milla as a major character. Milla and Tal are each horribly bigoted about their own culture's supposed superiority, so their reluctant cooperation makes for a very tenuous partnership.
The suggested reading age for The Fall is nine to twelve years, which seems right to me. Nix's writing, though not as spectacular in his books for young adult readers, is certainly above average.
The Seventh Tower series is published by Scholastic and George Lucas's Lucasbooks. The foil-and-Photoshop covers alone reek of money (I think they just plain reek, too, but that's a matter of taste.) Nix's role--and I hope he's being handsomely compensated for it--is that of world architect and author of the first six books. Each book adds another layer, but I've read the first four and must admit that none of them feel like a finished work. Each book ending feels more like a chapter ending. I can't help wondering if Lucas publishes the books at every two hundred to two hundred forty pages completed, regardless of where that leaves the readers.
Although The Fall is a perfectly respectable book, it seems like slumming compared to Nix's jaw-dropping high fantasies Sabriel and Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr, or even his disturbing Shade's Children. Don't get me wrong--I enjoy the Seventh Tower books, and I'd be perfectly happy if Lucas planned movies, comics, and a role-playing game in this setting. However, they're merely good, and some of Garth Nix's books are utterly brilliant. At five bucks a pop, I'll continue to buy the rest of Nix's Seventh Tower books, but I suspect I'll give up on the series after he's left it and go reread Sabriel again.
The Veil has been lifted. The Dark World is on its way to destruction. Can Tal and Milla restore order in time? The extraordinary conclusion to this b...More at HotBookSale
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