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Medalon (The Demon Child Trilogy: book 1) by Jennifer Fallon
01/09/2004 . Source: Jennifer Howell 
pub: Orbit. 615 page paperback. Price: £6.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-84149-326-0. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.orbitbooks.co.uk
Orbit
pub: TOR. 431 page hardback. Price: $24.95 (US), $34.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-30986-6)
check out website: www.tor.com
TOR
One thing I will always say for Orbit these days: they do have the best front cover art in the genre. In most genres, actually. I mention this because 'Medalon' is yet another attempt to buck the traditional fantasy cover art clichés and it looks wonderfully spooky and different: a photo of half a girl's face bathed in a dark blue light. Elegant and understated and yes, I like to think that a cover should at least try to reflect what's going on inside the book.
For a while, reading it, I was getting really hopeful that what lay behind the covers would be equally different. That sadly lasted about a hundred pages before all hope gave out. By page 300, I was really, really sick of it. By page 600, I was just barely resisting the temptation to throw it across the room.
Where to start? Yada, yada, ancient race, forgotten magic, heroine who is the 'Chosen One' - stop me if you've heard this before. OK, this time around, 'Our Heroine' is R'shiel (is the fashion for having pointless apostrophes in names going to stop anytime soon, I wonder?). 'Medalon' is a land controlled by the dictatorship of the Sisterhood, an order of rabid nuns. Except, in a nice twist, they're all atheists, which is new. According to their doctrine, everyone else who believes in any gods are therefore all heathens and must be wiped out by a Purge every couple of years - that would be the rest of the world then, unfortunately. The greatest triumph of the Sisterhood, though, has always been wiping out the immortal race of god-like Harshini a couple of centuries ago.
Then there's the rumour flying around that the last Harshini king fathered a half-human heir before he died - the infamous Demon Child that everyone thinks will save them. Confused yet? You will be.
R'shiel's mother is Joyhinia, a high-ranking and supremely nasty member of the Sisterhood, who delights in holding timely political coups and treating her daughter like dirt. Yup, I guessing she's 'A Baddie' then. R'shiel is supposed to be following her into the Sisterhood, but really isn't cut out to be the kind of dutiful daughter Joyhinia needs, not being quite sadistic and evil enough. R'shiel's big brother, Tarja, was a leading light in the Defenders, the all-male band of soldiers who do the Sisterhood's dirty work, until he insulted a former First Sister to her face and got banished to defend the northern border, as far from the Citadel as possible.
After a dull opening chapter, the first 200 pages are actually quite surprisingly good, which was a nice treat. After the original First Sister dies, Tarja is sent home from exile to the Citadel, where nasty political deeds are afoot. R'shiel, meanwhile, is getting mysterious crippling headaches and we can pretty much guess where this is going. There's some interesting politicking, some seriously dodgy gender politics (most of the women are horrible dictators, most of the men are not all that bad: interesting, from a female author) and the plot moves along. Sadly, after a couple of revelations just after page 200, it starts getting really dull. Like so many fantasy books, it falls into a pattern of chase and capture, repeat as require, throw in some nasty torture, escape, chase, capture...Repeat for the next 400 pages.
The one element of amusement comes from the gods, who are apt to pop up at intervals and meddle, but it's hard to tell just how relevant they are overall. The one line in the entire second half of the book that made me smile, has a group of shape-shifting demons, the Harshini sidekicks, materialise collectively in the form of a dragon; their rider explaining disdainfully that 'dragons don't really exist, Tarja' because the shape-shifting demons were always more believable, of course.
What starts as promising soon falls apart. The characters get repetitive and distinctly refuse to develop beyond what they are, considering the barrage of torture and general misery thrown at them, losing reader sympathy. The plot starts to lose its cohesion and there are some very strange choices made. What would work in another less traditional narrative feels out of place here, as though the material keeps dipping into a darker, nastier vein it wasn't designed for. The love interest, especially, feels out of place and wrong on more than one level. It was a distinct disappointment, considering it had already defied my expectations by being quite enjoyable at first.
Well, it looks pretty on my bookshelf and it makes a great doorstop but it makes an even better thunk when you throw it across the room in frustration at a wasted opportunity. Don't think I'll be catching up for book two, somehow.
Jennifer Howell 
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