The Sea Watch is the sixth book in the Shadows of the Apt series and starts off as pacey as ever with mysteries and conspiracies abounding! :D The Sea Watch picks up from where the previous book in the series, The Scarab Path, left off but with focus returning to Collegium and the various truces that exist and the politics that come off that as well the the day to shuffling of the many hats that many of the characters seem to wear for the good of the city or not! :o As ever with Collegium the politics revolve around Stenwold Maker and his motley group of misfits as they are described in the book! :D As ever the characters of Collegium are a many and varied lot and you fully sympathise with many of them having to deal with their colleagues! :D But this adds to the canvas of the book which provides a backdrop to the events that take place! :D It becomes very obvious early that the Spiders who formerly helped saved Collegium no longer has its best interests at heart which in turn brings Stewold into direct conflict with Arianna and his now former friend Teornis which ultimately leads to Stenwold and Teornis paying a visit the depths of the ocean where a whole raft of new Kinden are introduced! :D This whole setup takes a large part of the series in a new direction opening up a host of new plotlines that will no doubt be explored in future books! :D The introduction of so many new Kinden is handled in a very clever way and keep you guessing even more than the characters about their origins and how they ended up where they are! :D The is a whole palimpsest of new characters introduced with the characters like Wys completely almost stealing every scene she is in!:D Characterisation as ever is spot on with everything leaping of the page and the confrontations between Stenwold and Teornis taking most of the focus but in their final confrontation taking it in another unexpected route which will have major ramifications I suspect in future books! :DThere is also as ever a lot of humour throughout the book in between the bouts of George R R Martin Syndrome and all the revolutions and turncoating! :D An example of which is Stenwold rows out on his own to confront the Spider Armada and announces to them that he is the Collegium navy which even gets a laugh from the Spider Captain when she takes him aboard! :D Lol Also where the Veken and Tseni ants without any prompting is rib hurting! :DThere are also many mysteries hinted at in the book as for instance the hint that at some point there have existed Kinden who were not insect based as well as the unsolved mystery of how the Sea Kinden got, and why, they are where they are in the first place! :DThe Sea Watch is brilliant you are guaranteed to lose Sleep as one more chapter syndrome will certainly affect you! :D Brilliant stuff, pacey, full of mysteries, jaw dropping moments and everything on an epic scale! :D Highly recommended! :D Being the sixth book of a series creates certain difficulties, with each instalment it gets harder to treat the reader with something new, as by now we are familiar with the world, its people, its politics, its technology, the way the magic system works, and the characters. So it is a credit to the author that this book has managed to introduce so much that is completely new at this stage of the series.I have enjoyed all the books of this series so far, and while this one isn’t my favourite (book 5 claims that title) I did enjoy it.The down side is that, for all its 700 pages, it felt rushed. Like there were two 700 page books worth of material condensed into this one book. Spider-kinden greed, Wasp-kinden espionage, pirates, Collegium politics, betrayal, kidnapping, murder all combine to drive the story line from the familiar regions of the lowlands to an entirely new world below the sea. It is here that we are introduced to a range of new kinden (many with similar sounding names that made it hard to organise in my head at times) and each with their own motivations and desires. The book has a glossary at the back which does help but flipping back and forth between the glossary and the narrative does ruin the immersion.The story was engaging, and the Sea-kinden were interesting, and their world was intriguing but the whole thing flashed by much to quickly for me to altogether enjoy the experience.This is a good book in a good series, and anyone who is a fan of the series should definitely read this one. Just make sure you keep a notebook at hand to help you get the names straight in your head.
What do You think about The Sea Watch (2011)?
Sloooow to start but another page turner once you get far enough!
—joann
This one started a bit slow finished off nicely.
—atods
