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The Call by Peadar O'Guilin [SPOILERS]


RedEyedGhost

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4 hours ago, brunhilda said:

I thought that bit was hilarious. Is this a multi-book series or a one-shot? Because the Irish better get some damned good lawyers soon.

I know there's a second book planned (The Cauldron), but I think it's just the two.

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On 9/14/2016 at 2:56 PM, Werthead said:

To maintain naming continuty, a hypothetical Book 3 would have to be called The Cauldronizator or something :)

Hahahaha!  

What a great read. I was wondering if the idea for the Cauldron came later.  It doesn't appear as a swear until halfway through the book.

 I really loved Conor's POV as a window into sexual violence.  The scene at the end when he is assuming Nessa is stunned by his majesty is priceless.  He reinforced this with repeated references on how humiliating it was for Conor to be beaten by girls, rejected by Nessa who should have been GRATEFUL.  Her terror and disturbance after the assault felt very real.

I loved the descriptions of the Grey World.  

MEGAN!  :cries:

The romances were great.  I loved Aiofe's little jealousies.  They rang really true of young relationships.  Fourteen year old girls are full of hurt feelings, even for no reason.  I loved her sleep solution to being unable to grieve.

I'm not surprised that people were bothered by how violent it was.  YA has been getting babied down for decades, much to my dismay.  When The Hunger Games was released as films, most of the worst scenes were not shown.

 I'm going to loan this to my son.  He'll  love it.

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When I read about the Cauldron, I had a flashback to Lloyd Alexander... uh-oh for someone.

I hadn't thought about Conor's behaviour that way, Lily, but you're so right. Everything to preserve his sense of entitlement.

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9 hours ago, Angalin said:

When I read about the Cauldron, I had a flashback to Lloyd Alexander... uh-oh for someone.

Same here, whenever I read about the Black Cauldron (and it does show up quite often in Celtic-influenced fantasy) I have flashbacks to Prydain's Cauldron-Born.

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  • 5 months later...

Just finished reading it. Definitely enjoyed it.

One thing jumped out at me though:

The Sidhe spot Anto because his hair isn't moving like the girl's in the window. But seeing as he (like all the children) has a shaved head, surely his hair is too short to move in the wind at all?

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  • 1 year later...

The Invasion by Peadar O Guilin

The island of Ireland has been sealed off from the rest of the world by a mystical barrier. Technology cannot penetrate it. The people of Ireland, the division between north and south no longer mattering, are under constant attack. Every teenager is "Called", summoned to another realm where they do battle with the Aes Sidhe, the ancient rulers of Ireland before they were banished in a great war. The Sidhe have a day in their realm (three minutes in ours) to hunt down and kill the child, otherwise the victime escapes. Sometimes the Sidhe spare the victim, to return them home mutilated or "changed" in some horrific fashion. Most of the time, the Sidhe kill the victim.

Nessa has survived her Call, despite her deformed legs. Refusing to believe she could survive without betraying the Nation, Nessa's government imprisons her and subjects her to torture and interrogation. As Nessa tries to find a way of escaping, the last barriers between Ireland and the Grey Land begin to fail, and the invasion begins in earnest...

The Call was one of the genre highlights of 2016, a striking mash-up of Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies and the TV series Skins, but elevated by O'Guilin's signature dark wit and his sure grasp of Irish mythology. The Invasion (formerly entitled The Cauldron) is the continuation of this story.

Picking up quickly where The Call left off, the concluding part of the tale (this is a duology with the overall title The Grey Land; no trilogies here) follows three separate narratives: Nessa's misadventures in prison as a suspected enemy of the state; Anto as a soldier on the front lines of the invasion itself and Aoife back in the school, helping pick up the pieces in the aftermath of the Sidhe's failed attack. These narratives develop in swift parallel, the relentless pace picking up as each group of characters finds themselves in jeopardy, but also moving towards finding a resolution to the crisis. This results in rapid-fire chapters as we switch between groups (with occasional, brief switches to other characters) and get a more thorough understanding of how the war is proceeding.

The Call was a dark novel, but The Invasion is darker and more gruesome still, despite ostensibly being a YA book. There's also frank discussions of sexuality and a lot of earthy humour. The Invasion gives its young target audience a lot of credit for their maturity and their intelligence.

If there is a complaint, it may be that the book ends a touch abruptly. Things build to a major climax and we get that, with the revelations expanding on what we learned earlier in the novel (or in the preceding one) but the story does feel like it moves from midpoint to endgame in the space of just a chapter or two. Or it might just be that O'Guilin does such a great job of keeping the narrative ticking that it all being over is disappointing. Still, brave to the author for keeping this story constrained and tight rather than expanding things to a trilogy (which, given the first book's success, must have been tempting).

The Invasion (****) is available in the UK and USA now.

Edit: I had a few people ask about this when the first book came out, so will reiterate it here: the term "Aes Sidhe" is the original Irish term ("Aos Si" is a more recent form) for a mythological species of fairies or elves who originally ruled Ireland before being defeated by men. The Book of Conquests (also The Book of Invasions or The Book of the Taking of Ireland) is an account of this conflict, dating back to the 11th Century but based on considerably older oral traditions.

Needless to say, the term massively predates the term "Aes Sedai", which Robert Jordan borrowed from the Irish for his Wheel of Time sequence beginning in 1990. O'Guilin is simply using the original term from Irish mythology.

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11 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Unfortunately that's not true.

You can order it now :P

For the sake of two days and having to remember to come back and re-edit the review I thought I could let that one stand.

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6 hours ago, Werthead said:

You can order it now :P

For the sake of two days and having to remember to come back and re-edit the review I thought I could let that one stand.

I ordered it six months ago B)

I did just get my notification that my physical copy has shipped, and I'll get the email that it's ready for download in about 30 hours.  So there is that.

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I got it a few weeks ago. I enjoyed it, though probably not as much as the first one.

I agree with Werthead that the ending felt quite abrupt, and it feels like quite a few concepts in the setting could have used some fleshing out.

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