crooked ladder

     The CROOKED LADDER is a high-fantasy book that  has decent to good prose, solid character work and complexity that is well executed and displayed via interactions and story progression. The fantasy world-building is decent but a little bare bones, with the more interesting elements only emerging in the latter half of the book. The story progression is smooth and well paced but it failed to really capture my interest for the first 30 to 40% of the novel, and the reason for that ties into the book’s one major flaw: plotting. 

     The plot of the narrative is far from bad, the latter half of the narrative once they reach the mansion is very enjoyable, but it makes no space for its own protagonist. For one reason or another, Eldred is almost entirely denied agency through the course of the narrative. He is not absent of personal goals, but the actual tangible events and progressions of the narrative have only distant bearing on those goals. Which would be fine, except he also has almost zero agency in the events that do transpire, being reduced largely to a witness in every major plot point. He often passively affects the plot, but rarely actively is allowed to propel or alter the narrative.

     There are reasons for this in the second half of the book, which is partially why that half works better, and those reasons are well executed, providing a compelling conflict between a desire to act and scenes of peril against the inability to do so. But the first half of the narrative is characterized by events and characters Eldred barely cares about and has little to no agency with, and so it resulted in a series of events I had little to no investment in. 

     There are some other minor qualms I have with this  book, some of which can’t be expressed due to spoilers, but ultimately The high-fantasy book Crooked Ladder has a weak start and a strong finish.

Auhtor link:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22099322.C_R_Bracher