Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell (Tor Fantasy)

Originally I had planned to put this review up on my blog here, but since the review was missing over at FBS I figured fuck it (let’s go bowling, no kidding) let’s submit it there and be the team player. So yeah, if you really curious what I had say about this second novel by Tobias S. Buckell, check out my review on FBS. Little teaser for you guys here:

“I can safely conclude that this was a very satisfying read, providing me with a lot entertaining hours spanning over the 300 odd pages. The prose was good and enjoyable but not mindblowing. “

” One of the strengths of this novel is the characterization, especially Nashara the newest addition to the cast, was portrayed in an interesting way. The novel benefited quite well from another ’strong’ (in terms of personality) character, because she can kick ass ladies and gentlemen. When the advanced technology came into play, it produced some amazing scenes that left me grinning like a madman. The stucture of the short chapters (at times barely one page) also enabled Buckell to switch point of views in high rate, thus every character got plenty the attention and polishing he/she deserved. This in turn affected the level of characterization in a positive way. “

” However, with regard to the short chapters, there was one downside. Although the characterization did benefit from the point of view switching, the pacing certainly did not. The pacing was actually the only really major drawback of this book. I mentioned earlier that in the latter parts of the book the characters met up with each-other, needless to say the frequency of the chapter switching increased there as well. It resulted in a rather fragmented sequence of action scenes, it almost felt too ‘jumpy’. It was as if Tobias Buckell had trouble keeping all the balls in the air at the same time. It was also difficult to gain a clear view of what was exactly going on at the same time, I imagine these parts would have improved in quality when the author would have chosen to settle with one character to describe the action from. The plotting was mostly OK, Buckell tied up most of the plot lines quite nicely like I said earlier on, but there still was one plot line that seemed pretty pointless in the end. Thinking back to it, I can’t actually recall what purpose it served other than a more thorough introduction to the ruthless methods of the alien Satrapy make use of when controlling humanoids all over the universe. When push came to shove, the boy and the girl featured in the plot line were cast aside as characters without any importance. I do hope that Tobias Buckell has something up his sleeve for them in the next novel Sly Mongoose (which will be published in 2008) otherwise the whole thing seemed a precious waste of time. So far there is one thing that Tobias Buckell has succeeded in pulling off in both novels, quite an accomplishment really, and that is in giving each respective work a kind of Caribbean flavor that makes it stands out as an unique work from the rest of the pack. It is fun to see how his Caribbean background is gradually incorporated in the story and setting, with the Ragamuffins (who talk in some sort of Caribbean version of English), who could be dubbed as the Caribbean Space Cowboys, being the perfect examples to illustrate that. “

I rated it a solid 7.5 / 10