It must be hard to write a successful fantasy trilogy for the YA market, then to write another without rehashing any of your old ideas. William Nicholson has avoided this conundrum by just openly repeating himself. His Wind On Fire trilogy started with a book about young teenagers repressed by their education system going out on a quest of their own, and then a book about a conquering army being thwarted. And now he’s followed Seeker, about a boy escaping the repressive education system his schoolteacher father has condemned him to, with Jango, which is about thwarting a conquering army.
However, while I’ve several times stated my admiration of Slaves of the Mastery, Jango is but a poor imitation. Everything seems derived from that book, yet is nowhere near as satisfying.
After the events of the first book, Seeker, Morning Star and the Wildman are trainee Nomana – the super-powered Jedi rip-offs who seemed at least mysterious and powerful in the first book, but here have very little mystery, wisdom or conceptual strength. Meanwhile, the mighty warlord Amroth Jahan is bringing his army to Radiance, the empire that tried to destroy the Noma in book one, and with a new figurehead, is up to its old tricks – and has a ludicrous plan to bomb the island of the noma. At the same time, there is a totally extraneous sub-plot about a girl who grew up in a treetop kingdom trying to avoid being forced to marry one of the Jahan’s sons, and ultimately is of no consequence whatsoever. Yes, there was an extraneous sub-plot Slaves of the Mastery – Mumpo’s fight training – but that at least provided an exciting spectacle that added to the climax, and changed his character for the final book. I suppose Echo Kittle, treegirl, may be significant in book three, but there really needed to be something more to her here.
The plot is very weak. There’s another disappointing side-plot dealing with the overall enemies of the series, puppetmasters who are supposed to be creepy but really aren’t threatening or well-conceived at all, and are rather like the mystically-powered beings in The Wind On Fire – badly-sketched and too inhuman to really provoke any thought – and then one about the Wildman going back to his roots, with a totally tacked-on and underdeveloped love triangle appearing out of nowhere. Essentially, Nicholson needs a great many small plots overlapping to keep momentum going, and as well as the ones mentioned there are the stories of two sets of antagonists, neither very interesting, a vignette about what is blatantly Seeker’s eponymous future self, the fate of a very minor character from the first book, and the story of a mad professor whose suicide is so unconvincing and expedient that it really detracted from the final chapters – as if explosive urine, an appalling betrayal ‘twist’, the worst battle tactics ever, the most artificially added change in a father’s mindset ever conceived and powers not earned but simply used weren’t enough.
Jango wasn’t all bad. There are some great ideas – Echo swinging through the trees at the beginning, the idea that horses are totally unknown (though the idea that everyone is bowled over by their beauty becomes dubious, and calling them ‘Caspians’ seems odd – is there a Caspia in that world? Or was it a nod to Narnia?) and make a deep impression, and the way that not only the battle but its aftermath must be taken into consideration (a much better implementation of issues around the Iraq war than the suicide bombers of book one), for example. The first chapters promise much, even if little of it gets answered, and in the end the religious, socio-political and inter-personal ideas hinted at remain only broached, never explored.
And while Seeker, Morning Star and the Wildman aren’t as likeable or fully-realised as Kestrel and Bowman Hath, they’re not at all bad characters. Hard ones to really like, or truly empathise with, but certainly not overly annoying.
Jango wasn’t a great book. I’m starting to think Slaves of the Mastery was an anomaly, but it’s one I’m very glad happened, as it remains my favourite YA book of the last 15 years.
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