Control Point by
Myke Cole
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
I knew the author (from a distance) before I knew his writing. He's entertaining and provocative on a panel, and his twitter feed is worth following. I have found the author to be very intense to the point of confrontational on virtually every topic, but his opinions are generally well-informed and he has a knack for a brutal self-honesty that is disarming. It is more for these reasons than because of interest in the books that I bought and read this novel. And, as it turns out, it's good.
A lot is made of the military accuracy in this author's writing, and I agree that that's a plus, giving the fantasy elements a cool new look. Also, this is a very creative imagining of a world that has suddenly exploded with magic being confronted by military strength, and that premise supplies a lot of the fun. (A military fantasy of this type is not utterly new and unique, perhaps, but pretty new to me.) There is room for many more stories here, a wide canvas, and that's exciting.
However, to be honest, there were elements of this novel I disliked, and I almost felt led to assigning it a lower rating overall. [slight spoilers.] The middle of the novel is muddled; the main character flips his world view and his goals back and forth in a disorienting way, and we're asked to change our sympathies along with him. In the end I'm not sure who should have a claim on our sympathy. That can be a positive, making it thematically ambiguous, kinda like real life, but in an action-packed genre novel it often feels less like nuance and more like we're being tricked. (Or the author was changing his mind as he wrote.) I didn't like that aspect.
And in that middle section, Britton goes through a lengthy training that is analogous to the dull early part of traditional fantasy novels where the newly-minted magic-user learns how to handle his power, often with the help of a wizard type. Here, it is done in a sort of boot camp, which has its appeal, being a different flavor, but it still suffers from being too slow, too much like a long introduction. It's an origin story, which we probably need to kick off the series, but it's so full of his failures and suffering at the hands of brutal trainers and commanders, a barrage of bummers that isn't any fun, that I really wanted it to move on.
Thankfully, it does move on, and gets really good, and is much more fun to read.
I hung in there, and rolled with the main character, and got the payoff. The last 50 pages is where the best action occurs and when the clearest conflicts are addressed. (When the main character tries to do a thing, and then does the thing, and you're still wondering if it was right or wrong to do the thing, your motivation as a reader becomes challenged. It's nice when you can finally root for the character to DO THE THING!) In the final sequence, the action moves forward again instead of sideways, with a much more entertaining and satisfying mix of setbacks and successes. I would've liked more of this, but you know, it's all good.
So, IMO, it's a good novel, a solid 3 stars, an optimistic 4. But if the series continues the way the first novel ends it will absolutely be worth hanging in there, because that was pretty awesome. Here's to hoping.
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