Earth Logic

Laurie J Marks

Completed 6/12/2019, Reviewed 6/12/2019

3 stars

This was a very hard book for me to read.  While I found the prose to be quite good, I felt that there wasn’t much of a plot.  That isn’t to say little happened.  A lot happened, but I couldn’t tell where the story wanted to go.  In the end, it all made sense, but the journey getting there was rather hard to follow.  Nothing was really riveting.  It’s the second book in the Elemental Logic series, the first being Fire Logic.  Like its predecessor, the book won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for positive LGBTQ images in genre lit. 

The story picks up with Karis, the G’deon of Shaftal surrounded by her makeshift family of followers.  G’deon means she’s the ruler of the country.  She has not moved into that position because she’s waiting for a sign, something to signal that it is time to confront the invading forces, the Sainnites.  However, neither she nor her entourage know what sign they are looking for.  All Karis knows for sure is that she wants to bring about the end of the Sainnite occupation through peaceful means.

Karis isn’t really the main character of the book, though.  We do follow her in one of the narratives, but she doesn’t feel like the central part of the book, even though she’s the G’deon.  The much more interesting and profound character is Clement, a commander of the Sainnite army.  We follow her in the second narrative of the book.  Clement is a strong leader and had a complex personality.  She gives us a taste of what it’s like to be a leader of the invading force in a foreign land.  Zanja, who was a main character in the last book, has a major role in this book.  She’s not really a main character, but plays a pivotal role in the whole question of when Karis should make her move.  Specifically, she finds out through the reading of prophetic cards that she must die for Shaftal to be free.

As far as characterization goes, I didn’t feel like there was much character development except for Clement, she being the new character in this book.   In a supporting role was an interesting person named Gilley who was sort of her personal assistant.  He was deformed and unattractive, but helped Clement stay grounded in reality.  As much story as there was around the characters who appeared in the last book, there wasn’t much development in their personalities.  One had to rely on their memories of the last book to really get a sense of who they were in this book. 

There are a lot of plot details that are more exciting, but they all happen towards the end of the book, and I don’t want to give any spoilers.  In general, though, there isn’t that much excitement in the book until you get to the second half of the book.  I give this book three stars out of five.  While the prose was enjoyable, there wasn’t enough directionality to the book.  Even through the second half, I wasn’t sure where the plot was going.  The book was okay, but I’d expect more from an award winner.