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The Rook A Novel The Rook Files Daniel O'Malley Books

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The Rook A Novel The Rook Files Daniel O'Malley Books

I'm rounding up a bit.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, particularly two quite different aspects: its frequently silly sense of humor, and its well-conceived main character.

Starting with the latter: we meet two distinct versions of Myfanwy Thomas. The first we meet only in her letters to the second. Myfanwy knows that she will lose her memory, and makes exhaustive preparations for this event, which include writing letters to the woman who will awake, entirely ignorant, in Myfanwy's body. Both Myfanwy 1 and Myfanwy 2 are thoroughly imagined and sympathetic. The differences we eventually see between the two have plausible (and implicit, rather than unduly explained) causes. The reader ends up rooting for the hopes of one to be fulfilled in the fate of the other.

O'Malley's sense of humor is in his exuberant kitchen-sink-and-then-some combinations of elements and his deft way of walking the line between tweaking the reader and unduly breaking the spell.


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The Rook A Novel The Rook Files Daniel O'Malley Books Reviews

This is X-Men meet the Men in Black. If you are willing to take the ride, suspend disbelief and let the story wash over you, you will enjoy this book. It is total fantasy with plenty of thrills, gore and political intrigue. Warring secret societies battle for control of England and potentially the US, however, they have no desire to reveal themselves to the general population, ever. They manage to live, fight, kill and die in some of the most grotesque ways while keeping themselves totally under the radar. The politics of the organizations contain all sorts of Machiavellian twists and turns which only add to the enjoyment and advancement of the plot. The story is told through the eyes of Myfanwy (pronounced like Tiffany with an M) Thomas who finds herself awakening, surrounded by dead bodies, with no memory of her past at all. Her pre-amnesia body has written her letters which guide her, and therefore the reader, through the back story of her life and give her clues as to how to deal with her new reality. She belongs to an organization called the Chequy made up of people with supernatural powers and politically organized like a chess set. We follow her as she learns of her past, deals with her present and contemplates her future among a group of people with amazing supernatural powers which she learns she also possesses.

This book is a lot of fun and like nothing I have ever read before. I recommend it to fantasy lovers and others willing to try something new.
Daniel O'Malley's The Rook gives you one heck of a hook, there's no denying that. When your book's opening line is "The body you are wearing used to be mine," well, that's a great way to draw in your reader. And as we meet the woman living in the body of one Myfanwy (rhymes with "Tiffany," she explains) Thomas - and realize that she's awakened in this body while surrounded by a surprisingly large number of unconscious bodies - we realize that there's a whole lot going on here. Mind you, Myfanwy seemed to know that her mind was going, and has left a lot of letters behind to guide her body's new tenant. That's a fantastic setup for a book, but it only gets you so far - does The Rook have enough to hold up after that intro?

Well, it depends. How do you feel about a secret government organization that dabbles in supernatural affairs, fights a group of genetically engineered Belgians, looks for oracular ducks,  has members with hive minds, and so much more? Because - and this is just speaking for myself - I had a blast with it.

The Rook is absolutely bonkers at times, and I mean that in the best possible way. There's a tendency with first novels to be a bit overstuffed with ideas, as though the author is worried that this is their one chance at it all, and they've got to put everything in just in case they don't get another shot. And that definitely can be the case with The Rook, which is filled with digressions, odd tangents, bizarre side characters, and sometimes can feel meandering. But when all of those ingredients are so enjoyable and fun, who really cares? O'Malley has put together a wonderful secret world just below the surface of our own, and has packed it with oddities, nightmares, and the inexplicable - and also, views it all with a sense of humor and a realization that even with supernatural powers, people can still be clueless idiots.

What that all adds up to is a book that defies easy categorization - it's got elements of science fiction, espionage, British comedy, action, horror, government thrillers, and so many other things, and yet in the end, it feels like nothing so much as it feels like itself. And that's something we don't get all that often. The overarching plot of the book is great - as the new Myfanwy tries to figure out who has betrayed her, and what it has to do with an invasion of nightmarish Belgian creations - but The Rook works because of how much O'Malley has invested in this world and the characters that populate. From the bizarre Gestalt (who has four bodies, but only one mind) to the dreamwalking Lady Farrier - and those are the most normal ones - O'Malley gives every single character proper time and depth, bringing them all to life in a variety of ways, and letting them be far more than just a unique power; instead, they're all figures of menace, wonder, and, yes, strangeness.

The Rook has a strange structure for a novel, alternating chapters in which we follow the new Myfanwy as she navigates her new life and tries to figure out the threats around her with long letters from the original Myfanwy - letters that she's left for her successor (how she knew that she was going to lose her memory is part of the book's story). That can lead to the sense that O'Malley is tossing in massive exposition dumps frequently, or stopping the narrative flow that he's got going for these long tangents that don't quite go anywhere. That's not an unfair complaint to have, and there are times where The Rook can feel too loose. But every story builds out this world in such interesting ways, and more than that, there's the way that O'Malley is making the absent Myfanwy as much a character in the book as the new one - and contrasting the two so sharply - that I'm willing to forgive it. (Also, one of those letters gives the story about the oracular duck, which is so good that it could be a short story in of itself, and leave me deeply satisfied.)

The Rook isn't flawless; even apart from that loose structure, O'Malley definitely falls into that trap of having his female characters spend too much time thinking about their own attractiveness and that of their friends. (It's not constant, at least; more than that, He does, thankfully, nicely avoid the trap of turning them into being defined by their desire for men. Indeed, there's almost no relationship drama at all in The Rook, which is nice.) But on the whole, The Rook, giving you more plot than your average novel - a conspiracy, a betrayal, a secret organization, supernatural powers, infiltration missions, and more - all while playing around in a world that's full of weirdness, wonder, and a surprising amount of idiocy. It's done with humor and a light touch, turning what could have been a grim story into something really fun and engaging. I had an absolute blast reading it - every digression, every tangent - and I'm glad there's more books to come, so I can come back to this wonderfully weird world. 
I read the reviews before buying this, well, I got the sample first. I disagree with most of them, except one. It was a 1 star review, saying that reading this was like reading about a game of D&D. Since I'm and avid reader of dndgreentext on reddit, I decided to get the sample. Then I purchased the book, and proceeded to finish reading it in about 8 hours (with breaks for dinner and game night with my wife). The ending made me cry happy tears. Some people say it was written poorly, I do not agree with that at all. Some didn't like the swapping between perspectives, I enjoyed it and how it gave background and flavor to the story. Someone said the characters were one dimensional, which couldn't be further from the truth, particularly about the main character. It was an interesting concept, it took an old trope, amnesia, and gave it a different flavor. This isn't like X-files, sure as hell isn't like Harry Potter, the closest I can think of is Simon Green's Man With the Golden Torc series, or his Carnaki institute. Different type of humor though.

Maybe you'll like it, maybe it's not your thing, but I recommend giving it a try, because it's a well done story.
I'm rounding up a bit.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, particularly two quite different aspects its frequently silly sense of humor, and its well-conceived main character.

Starting with the latter we meet two distinct versions of Myfanwy Thomas. The first we meet only in her letters to the second. Myfanwy knows that she will lose her memory, and makes exhaustive preparations for this event, which include writing letters to the woman who will awake, entirely ignorant, in Myfanwy's body. Both Myfanwy 1 and Myfanwy 2 are thoroughly imagined and sympathetic. The differences we eventually see between the two have plausible (and implicit, rather than unduly explained) causes. The reader ends up rooting for the hopes of one to be fulfilled in the fate of the other.

O'Malley's sense of humor is in his exuberant kitchen-sink-and-then-some combinations of elements and his deft way of walking the line between tweaking the reader and unduly breaking the spell.