Lords of the Sky, by Angus Wells

Lords of the Sky is a fantasy novel telling the story of Daviot, a young man with an exceptional memory, in a world where periodic raids by the airborne Sky Lords strike terror into the heart of ordinary villagers. Recruited as a storyteller and historian, he travels from his home and realises the problems with the land are not all that they seem, but all the while he dreams of peace.
This is a fairly long but fairly typical fantasy story in many ways - young man with talent of some sort goes away from home and embarks on a long journey. People join him on the way from various different factions in the world, and at the end he saves the world. But while that is the overall plot, it's not quite as simple as that, and like any good fantasy there's a good few twists and an interesting world described.

Perhaps what makes this book different from the cookie cutter fantasy is what seems to be an attempt to tackle deeper issues - a central issue to this book is slavery, and another is meaningless continued war. In fact, I actually found some of this quite difficult to read, with some of the reasoning behind actions taken by the faction leaders simply making little sense, although I suppose that's often the nature of war. I did find myself feeling sympathy for the main characters when faced with the fustration of stupid and blind leadership.

Ultimately, though, something is just not quite right with this book. I felt perhaps it was all a bit too heavy handed and while the main characters were quite deep and faced many interesting personal developments, the rest of the characters really don't seem to manage any changes. It feels like the author has attempted to make a deep and meaningful story, but only really got half way. I'm not sure that I've really got across here exactly what is wrong; it's more of a feeling that I found most of the minor characters quite distasteful.

This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the story, though. I did like the history of the world which cropped up from time to time, and the plot was quite interesting, with twists and turns done both from the investigations of the main characters as well as events, and I did find it hard to predict exactly what would happen next (although I could predict the overreaching plot reasonably easily). The writing is good, and the book flows well without dwelling overlong on pointless filler. There is a real sense of tragedy too, as the author is not afraid to kill off characters yet still leave memories.

So I find myself with mixed feelings concerning this book. Yes, it was a decent enough story and there were a good few twists and turns in the plot which added interest. But the underlying premise, and the solution to the problems, didn't really quite work. Perhaps the best I can say is this is an interesting and readable work of fantasy, but not really as good as it could have been.

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