City of Towers by Keith Baker

I tried to read this book when it was pretty new, nearly fifteen years ago, but I never really got very far into it for whatever reason.  After stumbling across my EBERRON REMIXED tag recently, I decided to try again, and got this from the library and read it; I remember thinking in the past that it was fairly thick and dense, but this time around, I found it more light and breezy.  Anyway, even with my busy schedule, I was able to finish it in a few days and request the next book in the series, which I've now also started.  Even though the book is old, I thought I'd review it.

I've long been fascinated with stories that take place in a definitely fantasy setting, but which tell a different kind of story.  The City of Towers by Keith Baker is one such story.  Keith Baker is the creator of the Eberron setting, and this was not only the first Eberron novel, but also Baker's first novel.  It's part of a trilogy; The Dreaming Dark, and while Eberron is, of course, a fantasy setting (given that it's a D&D setting) this story is really a noir story, and it hits all kinds of noir beats as it develops.  It takes place almost entirely in an urban setting, and it focuses on the amoral; the criminal elements, and the skulduggery of the elites who maneuver and connive to get ahead politically or otherwise.  There's a fair bit of mystery involved, and the plot is certainly involved with solving a mystery of disappearing victims, but there are other "meta mysteries" that are touched on and often left unresolved so they can dangle into the rest of the trilogy.

The characters are also very much like noir characters; kind of cynical and weary, veterans of a war that recently ended, unwanted and unwelcome in their new environment, and struggling to find their place and deal with their past.

The book logs in at just about 335 pages, plus a lot of appendices and stuff at the back giving some setting explanation.  I personally think that was unnecessary; the story stands on its own without it, and most people who read it will have bought the actual setting book too.  About typical for this kind of fantasy story, really.

For a first time novelist, Baker does a pretty decent job.  There are only a handful of minor complaints about his writing that I can make, and I've certainly seen worse from more established writers.  For instance, the novel feels occasionally like it's making stops for no other reason than to show off some aspect of the setting.  I guess he can hardly be faulted for doing so, and maybe it's even a good idea given the purpose of the novel in being published, but occasionally I was left wondering what the point of some vignette was other than to give us some kind of gratuitous exotica (even within the standard terms and conventions of D&D.)  The tone was occasionally jarring too; the main point of view character in particular, who's usually kind of somber and bitter, would occasionally throw out this strange one-liner joke; almost a dad joke, even.  I felt like the clues pointed more towards the meta mystery than the mystery associated specifically with this novel; it almost felt like a scenic detour when we did the resolution.

All of those seem kind of nitpicky, though, and I almost hesitate to call them out for fear that they sound like crippling flaws.  They are nothing of the kind; there are merely minor technicalities; the novel would be marginally better if they were fixed, but they don't really harm its initial impression too much.  What is perhaps more irritating is one aspect of the characterizations; the main characters seemed to have bizarrely emotional sensitive triggers, and were suddenly either really mad or really sad at the drop of a hat.  For supposed officers and veterans of a war, they were lacked an equanimity that that experience should have given them in dealing with certain kinds of adversity, and I thought that this aspect of their characterizations was both juvenile and unrealistic.  And a structural flaw that, admittedly, might be a personal pet peeve of mine, but I don't think so: a lot of stuff is held back to increase suspense, I presume, but it is information that the main characters know quite well; we just aren't told as the readers, so when the main characters finally say, "I yeah, I'm a member of that house" or whatever the big reveal is, rather than it seeming like suspense, it just felt like irritation and frustration.  Why don't we as the readers know that if the point of view character who's head we've been in obviously does, because it's his whole freakin' backstory?  This is a very cheap trick and only works on the most unsophisticated of readers; pretty much everyone else will find it irritating.

In any case, the novel was certainly competent enough that I was willing to move on and read the rest of the trilogy.  I'm about 20% or so into the second book now, so hopefully by the end of the week, or at most, early next week, I'll review that one too.