Inda By Sherwood Smith

World-Building: Great
Characterization: Great
Plot: Awesome

Inda is a novel - the first in a series - which gives us insight into the life of Indevan, the second son of a Prince in  a fantasy kingdom. Overall, I enjoyed this book and the characterizations and hanging plot points might induce me to read the next one. There were things about it that I found refreshing compared to other fantasy works, but at the same time there were things that were very annoying.

I appreciated the fact that this novel is clearly NOT based on medieval Europe. At least not in the obvious, stereotypical way that every other fantasy novel is. Instead, the people and world reminded me a little bit of the Mongols and China. I also appreciated the fact that Inda was suddenly thrown into a completely different life halfway through the book and the author still made it work! The characters eventually became very engaging.

At the beginning, however, it was very difficult to figure out who was who. The names were long and very similar, but that would have been fine had we not been hit with official titles (sometimes in more than one language) and nicknames for each and every character. And there were a lot of characters. Also, if you think you have them figured out based on their simple - and kind of strange - nicknames like Sponge and Dogpiss and so on think again, because the nicknames can change anytime someone does something notable, embarrassing, or gets into accident... so yeah, it takes a while to figure out what's going on and who is who and none of Smith's attempts to explain the title system or break it down for us help. What really helps is when the secondary characters start to get their own POV moments.

However, this is a double-edged sword. Smith changes POV in the middle of a paragraph, which can, at first, be even more confusing and frustrating. I got used to it eventually, but I don't feel she handled it in the best way possible. Also, someone should have edited the sentences more closely for... general readability. There were times when I had to read a sentence twice and three times and I still didn't get what she was trying to say.

In the beginning of the book, when the story was more focused on Inda and a couple of other young characters this wasn't much of an issue, but as the characters grew up and the POV widened there was suddenly a huge obsession with sex in the book. The people in this story must all have STDs because no one has any problems with having sex with random strangers, pleasure house workers, and so on. They also have a weird and widespread belief that if a teenager reaches puberty and doesn't start having sex frequently then something bad is going to happen. Um, no. Due to this almost universal belief we get friends, parents, brothers, and other relations taking the kids to pleasure houses when they reach puberty to spend a night with workers who are "specialized in first-timers" or something... *gags* No. I'm sorry, but just no. Also, did I mention STDs? The author certainly didn't. Nor did she really mention the emotional consequences of this set-up. *shudders and tries to move on to a different topic*

Last thing I'll say about that is that if this aspect of the novel/world had been apparent at the start of the book I probably wouldn't have made it through the book - would have chucked it aside and moved on. However, by the time this becomes clear I already wanted to know what happens to Inda.

Also, I found it really annoying that the author had to invent her own words for simple everyday actions/feelings. For example, someone can display "frost" which is supposed to be a bad thing that you're never really forgiven for, a pretty bad accusation, but I still haven't figured out if frost means being cold towards others (my initial assumption) or vanity. It's probably the latter, but seriously, after reading a 500 page book why do I need to still be wondering about this. Just use the word vanity and move on.

Finally, when I had about 20 pages left, I suddenly realized that there was no way whatsoever in which the author could resolve the plot by the end of the book. Nothing is resolved. She manages to end with a game-changing decision, but this does not really offer the justice we hoped Inda would get.

And with this review I seem to have convinced myself that there's more bad about this novel than good.

I'll conclude by saying that Sherwood Smith made up a pretty detailed and extensive world with a magic system were're only beginning to discover, that she managed to - eventually - reveal some pretty interesting characters, but that this could have been delivered in a much better way. I've had my say, you decide whether this book if for you or not... I don't think I can recommend it without repeating, again, the things that didn't work for me as a warning.