Originally published on my blog here in November 2006.The follow-up to the wonderful The Light Ages, The House of Storms revisits the same world a century or so later.The plot describes the machinations of Guildsmistress Alice Meynell, whose pursuit of personal power at any cost eventually leads to a terrible civil war between the east and west of England. This is not the confrontation between king and parliament which happened in the real world, which is now remote enough that it has been romanticised, but a horrific, draining conflict clearly modelled on the Western Front in the First World War.One of the typical plots of the fantasy genre - which reflects the appeal it has to the adolescent audience - is the underhand "bad guy" adult being opposed and beaten by young teens. The House of Storms looks as though it might follow this storyline, as the first part of the novel describes a love affair between Alice's son Ralph and one of the maids at the house of the title, Invercombe near Bristol where Ralph travels to recuperate from an illness. However (to return to the point), MacLeod decides to reveal the unlikelihood of the standard plot, as Alice easily defeats their plans to flee to the Fortunate Isles; it is only realistic for experience and duplicity to overcome naivety. This leads straight to the strange second part, much of which is told from the point of view of a new character. He is a boy growing up in Einfell, the sanctuary for those whose humanity has been destroyed by over-exposure to aether, the raw material of magic. This was for me reminiscent of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, though not quite at the level acheived in that classic novel.While The House of Storms is clearly a cleverly conceived and well written fantasy novel, it is not really as readable as The Light Ages. For this, the easy victory given Alice Meynell already mentioned is partly to blame, for it exposes the insipidity of Ralph and Marion as characters with whom the reader is meant to identity: the other main characters are too ruthless (Alice) or strange (Klade). It invites re-reading, though, and doing so is rewarding. The first time through, though, I found it hard to spend more than five minutes reading the novel without putting it down and taking a break. If you want a cute and fluffy, easy read, then The House of Storms is not for you; but for those who want something deeper, especially those who enjoyed The Light Ages, it is well worth making the effort.
The summary on the back of this book promised much, and the story had a good, strong start. But into part two, it felt clumsy, disjointed and never quite delivered this punch I felt I was promised. I found the whole thing very underwhelming. I wasn't given that intangible small something to make me care about Marion and what happens to her or even feel any kind of emotion for Ralph. The language in which the Chosen Ones were written was a bit convoluted and hard to follow at times and too much description and not enough dialogue over all. It really felt like the author was almost there, but wasn't sure what to do to take it up that tiny bit to the next level. By the time I realized I wasn't getting anything good, I was more than halfway through and decided to finish. I wouldn't call it total crap, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone either.
What do You think about The House Of Storms (2006)?
Having read "The Light Ages" I'm not sure what I expected from this book, because really the authors penchant for writing books populated by flat characters (that no one cares about) in which somehow (despite rather a lot of things going on, war/social upheaval/etc) nothing happens, had already been established. The beginning showed promise, and as with the first book there are lots of interesting gemlike ideas scattered throughout and so I endured, expecting it to develop somehow (because surely he'd learnt his lesson the second time round). But just when things were getting interesting everything came to a grinding halt and it became clear that the mildly diverting beginning was all just overblown backstory for the main (non)event.After several awkward leaps forward in time following an entirely new person (that I cared about even less that the first lot) the story followed a ragged group of infinitely bland and somewhat delirious characters through the blasted, nightmarish and incomprehensible landscape of war torn England as they did, well... very little. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about these books is the potential, because somewhere within all that blandness there is an excellent world with huge possibilities. But alas, what little good there is inevitably gets lost along the way, leaving us with a final product that renders itself entirely pointless before ever it reaches the final page.
—Ziggi
