In Order to Write

Poison Sleep by T.A. Pratt - review

April 30th, 2008 | by smokingpen |

T.A. Pratt (a.k.a. Tim Pratt) is writing a series of four books. The first, Blood Engines, which is now followed up by Poison Sleep. You can read the previous review here or the first chapter of Blood Engines here.

Poison Sleep follow Pratt’s character Marla Mason, the chief witch of the city of Felport. Pratt’s first book takes place in San Francisco as Marla and her partner Rondeau are there attempting to find the Cornerstone, an extremely magical piece of stone that can change or alter reality. She needs this to… it doesn’t matter. Read the book, the previous review, or the first chapter.

T.A. Pratt follows up Blood Engine with Poison Sleep. This book is set about two months after the first and takes place in Felport. Instead of dealing with a crazed magician’s… oh wait, dealing with more crazed magicians, Marla begins the book by racing to a hospital for the magically insane. One of the craziest of the witches in the hospital escaped from her cell and was trying to escape. As a result, another patient woke up and disappeared, leaving orange blossoms behind and a giant hole in the wall.

Marla returns to Felport (the criminally insane and patients are outside of the city) realizing that she needs to interview and hire a Love Talker, needs to find an assistant who can keep her life in order, and has to take care of Susan Wellstone’s holdings in the city (see previous book for why), divvying them up among the other leading witches and wizards. However, the story is never as simple as what needs to be done. The escaped patient, Genevieve, has created a reality that is alongside the one Marla lives in. One of the problems that Marla encounters is that people, ordinaries, are being pulled into her world.

The outcome is… well, less than I expected.

I started reading Pratt through his book The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl. I fell in love with this book and looked forward to reading more of his work. As a result, I’ve read some of his short stories and then, excitedly, picked up Blood Engine. My chief criticism of the previous book was the use of sex and sexuality to illustrate the movement in the book. Though I didn’t mind reading through that, the addition of that material seemed… out of place with the book as a whole. However, knowing that information and some of the details added in the first book allows the reader to realize backstory with Marla and, even though not something I would’ve added to the book, allows a greater understanding of the character.

As a result of Rangergirl and Blood Engines I was excited to see what would happen next… especially when you move Marla out of San Francisco and back into her base of operations: Felport. The outcome was less than I was expecting. Rangergirl was a really good story that caught my attention and suggested that Pratt was going somewhere. Blood Engine carried this forward buy setting up the potential for a really good series of books. Poison Sleep, though, doesn’t match up to the previous two books. Granted, you read a book for the author, and you read a story to see what commentary the author will make; and Pratt does tell a good story, but in this case I wonder if this was a good story poorly told or a poor story told exceptionally well.

Truth told, I didn’t feel as though this was a continuation of the Marla Mason stories. Yes, I expect to read the  next two books (planned) in the series and look forward to their coming out; but I don’t think that Pratt told an exceptionally compelling story in this book. The saddest part of the book, to me, was the rather … predictable and odd way the story ended. I don’t think that the resolution to the story matched the buildup to the end. Sure, Pratt is writing stories where the fate of Felport - and by extension the world - is in jeopardy; but on the flipside of that, at no time did I really feel like the story had created enough conflict or danger where the world (or Felport) might actually be in danger.

I think that Pratt needs to write a more compelling story where he either deals with Marla (protagonist) in danger and the depth of the story and all action surrounding the ancillary characters, deals with her being in mortal danger. Otherwise, the world affecting danger should actually deal with the potential of actual world destruction.

Truth told, I appreciate Pratt as a writer and look forward to reading the next book in the series, Dead Reign.