Slaves of the Mastery

I just finished reading Slaves of the Mastery, the sequel to William Nicholson’s The Wind Singer. And, to my surprise, I absolutely loved it. I mean it – I adored it, and when I laid it down, after finishing drinking up the last pages, I felt energised, determined, eager for more.

All this much to my surprise. The improvement from the last book is immeasurable; gone is the simple episodic structure of the original, and the brisk, superficial prose, replaced by simple but elegant writing, brimful with detail and pleasing imagery, and a narrative that becomes truly grandiose. Rather than charming but daft ideas that seemed like rejections from Gulliver’s Travels, here Nicholson borrows heavily from religious imagery – a race of pilgrim people escaping their masters to find a promised land, a woman happy to turn the other cheek, a force that flows through all things and is best embraced and followed rather than controlled. The effect is stunning.

I would recommend it to anyone, and for that reason, advise you not to read on if you don’t want the story spoiled.

It’s best to forget the first book, where Aramanth seemed the only significant place in the world of the books, then as vulnerable as it is now, and the characters bear little resemblance to their original incarnations. The city falls when the soldiers of the mastery invade, enslaving the population and taking them to the city of the Mastery. Here the stakes are raised instantly, when the brutality of the Mastery is shown starkly – they trap people in cages and burn them to death in front of their loved ones to serve as a deterrent. The shocking directness of this image brilliantly sets the tone: dark, adult, intense, moving.

There is a lull in the middle, but most things cohere in the end. I disliked the envoy from Gang, expecting them to be a brief diversion like the Chaka and Baraka in the first book rather than a major plot element, but in the end Sisi was an interesting and amusing character, and Kestrel’s dance was entirely beautiful. I wasn’t keen on a talking cat (well, a holistic ability to talk to animals), but as comic relief, the cat was perfect, if unoriginal. Psychic powers are rather a dull addition, but it IS cool to see Bowman sweeping soldiers from the staircase before him. Like the best anime, Slaves of the Mastery succeeds brilliantly by taking a story that would look uninspired in summary and making it totally captivating in the details.

The Master being an ambiguous villain, who has created something utterly beautiful which he rules with an iron fist, is expertly revealed, and a city full of slaves is an enchantingly bold concept. The scene where the whole city is coordinated in a vast musical performance is inspired, and even Mumpo’s moment as a fighter (while a continuation of an irritating central-characters-are-naturally-vastly-gifted conceit) shines. The whole climax is superbly orchestrated, and while I thought that the whole thing was going to hinge on the rather weak reliance on one character having fallen in love with Kestrel, that was not, in fact, a particularly necessary part of the puzzle at all, and only made one moment all the more poignant. Brilliant writing, brilliant plotting – worth the slow build-up, for the pay-off was so massive.

And it’s refreshing that in escaping their masters, in setting themselves free, the heroes cause the destruction of something beautiful and the deaths of many –are they really so much better than what they fought against?

It oozes cinematic glory, sexuality, intelligence and knowledge of how to make not only a good story, but good characters (amidst, I have to say, several very flat ones) with intrigue that will carry to the next book quite easily. Everything is wrought in intricate detail, and Nicholson showed a brilliance with minor touches I had never thought possible after The Wind Singer. A mountain is made of a molehill when Kestrel thinks she is betraying Sisi by making her use a secret sign that means one thing to her, quite another to Zohon, her admirer, but when she realises she cannot go through with her deception, but Sisi does the gesture of her own accord anyway, it is one of those classic brilliantly-contrived moments.

If anything deserves to be made into a film, it is this little gem. What a shame it so out-shines its predecessor; if this had come first, the trilogy would likely have made a far greater impact than it did. Stunningly beautiful.

Truly the best children’s book I have read in some time – one of the best, in fact, that I have ever read. Superb.