4.5 stars for The Hawk and His Boy

The Hawk and His Boy (The Tormay Trilogy #1)

Author: Christopher Bunn
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Rating: 4 Stars

The Hawk and His Boy is a first book in a series, lovingly written with well rounded characters and poetic language.

Summary:

Jute can break into any house, climb any wall, and steal anything--and he just got hired for what he thinks is an easy burglary job. The only problem is, if he succeeds, the Thieves Guild is going to murder him. He just doesn't know that. Not yet.

Being a thief always came easy for him, but it's a lot harder now, particularly when everyone wants him dead. Hiding out in the city of Hearne, Jute finds some strange allies in an old wizard and a talking hawk. Together, they uncover an ancient secret of terrifying power.

All Jute needs to do is stay alive long enough to figure out why there's a price on his head, why a deadly shadow is stalking him, and why the dark is haunting his dreams. Also, why on earth is the wind talking to him?

Review:

The Hawk and His Boy is the first book in the Tormay Trilogy, which I can only describe as fabulous, poetic epic fantasy with a Young Adult flavor - probably because Jute, the protagonist, is a young boy, and another main character, Levoreth, is a young girl.

The title drew me in as soon as I laid eyes on it, it held so much promise. A boy belonging to a hawk and not the other way round sounded intriguing. The book did not disappoint.

First of all, let me say that the blurb is a little misleading. The book is not so much about Jute as it is about events that bring a change in the world of Tormay, and Jute is only one of the players – obviously he will prove a significant one, perhaps in the next book or so, but in this first book we see little of him. He is a little passive as a character, thrown into circumstances he cannot very well control, although toward the end of the book he has some odd dreams that seem to lead to bigger events yet to come. He’s clever and likable and I look forward to reading more about him in the next book.

Another very important character, whose chapters are even longer than Jute’s, is Levoreth. Levoreth is a very enigmatic character and also very funny. I loved her interactions with everyone, especially with her aunt and uncle, and looked forward to every chapter featuring her. She’s also a very powerful person as we discover in the course of the book, with a great twist I can’t reveal. She is my favorite character.

Two more characters have their own chapters, both of them antagonists. This, of course, is a relative term, as the author takes care not to paint any character in simple black and white. The Knife is an intriguing character, violent and brooding, a grown-up man working as an assassin, but as his story unfolds, we see different sides to him. I thought his character was very well crafted.

The last character is Nio, the mage, is another intriguing person, also a grown up, whose knowledge of the magic of the world makes his chapters very interesting.

This brings me to another great aspect of the novel: world building and in particular magic. I enjoyed very much the solid magical system created by the author, the sense of long history and magic lost, the four elements and the chamber of the mosaics connected to words of power. It all had a ring of truth about it which I found enthralling.

The language is the third element I will touch upon. I love epic fantasy written in beautiful prose, and if you like it too, then this book might be for you. Especially Levoreth’s chapters, but the rest as well, are written so beautifully, in sparse and yet poetic prose that reminded me of Patricia Anne McKillip’s, in works like Alphabet of Thorn, and the Riddlemaster trilogy.

However, as the book is entitled The Hawk and His Boy, one might expect to see these two more that we do see them. As it is, I felt that the title was not entirely justified. I would have loved to see more of Jute and the Hawk and find out more about them both.

Lastly, no thread is tied at the end of the book. The story simply stops and resumes, one imagines, in the sequel. As this is the first book in a trilogy, one does not expect the story to end here, but one does expect some sort of minor resolution, which never happens.

Apart from these two minor quibbles, I very much enjoyed reading The Hawk and His Boy and finished it within three days, grabbing time to read whenever I could spare it. I highly recommend it to fans of the epic fantasy kind and I cannot wait to read the sequel.

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