At an unreasonably slow rate, I have gotten to the second book of the Darwath trilogy, The Walls of Air. And as a chapter in that series, it was pretty good! Characters and relationships developed, plot advanced, the world and its history gained a little more clarity. All the things you would want out of an ongoing story. It’s just that, as a book alone, it had issues. (This right here is where my penchant for staying away from reading groups of books all in a row meets with occasional failure.)

Our romantically entangled heroes split into two groups, with wizards Ingold and Rudy off to seek the assistance[1] of the wizard school at Quo, whose residents may have the knowledge and/or power to fight the Dark, while city guard and former grad student[2] Gil and widowed Queen Minalde stay behind with the last vestiges of the kingdom of Darwath at the ancient Keep of Renweth, renowned for being able to keep the Dark Ones out. Rudy’s arc is both the slowest and the most necessary, as by the end of the book, it actually seems like he might have grown into a useful element in the story, instead of being only an observer to Ingold’s awesomeness. Gil’s arc deals with the acquisition of knowledge, which she does with the same single-minded determination she throws into her guard duties. Minalde’s arc is about growing into leadership and Ingold’s arc is about learning to rely on people who are not himself. Like every middle book of every trilogy, things seem far worse by the end than they did at the beginning, but glimmers of new hope are still out there.

The problem I had, I think, was the pacing. I feel like there were maybe 100 pages of text devoted to plot, and not that much more devoted to character development. Rudy grew a lot, as I said, and Minalde grew a little, but Ingold’s changes were incremental at best (a problem with someone who starts off so strong) and Gil didn’t particularly change at all. Then again, she hardly needed to. My point, I guess, is that when the plot status is hardly different at the end of the book than where it started, and only one character has undergone major changes? It feels like things could probably have been tightened up. Still, I should say that this was something I thought about but rarely during the course of the book; it’s only that I have so little to say while reflecting on it now, and I think that this pacing issue is the reason.

[1] Should I back up a step and mention that society is collapsing because underground-dwelling, shape-changing, light-averse beings known as Dark Ones have burst forth from beneath major cities to mostly slaughter humankind? Consider it mentioned!
[2] Should I also mention that Rudy and Gil[3] are from California, brought by Ingold when he was saving the royal heir during the first modern attack by the Dark, last book? I guess I already have, in a way.
[3] Jill? Gill? I wish I had any idea how that’s meant to be pronounced!