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Cartomancy (The Age Of Discovery Trilogy book 2) by Michael A. Stackpole
01/06/2007 . Source: Tom Lloyd-Williams 
pub: Bantam Spectra. 429 page enlarged paperback. Price: $15.00 (US), $21.00 (CAN). ISBN: 0-553-38238-1. pub: Bantam Spectra. 558 page paperback. Price: $ 6.99 (US), $ 9.99 (CAN). ISBN: 0-553-58664-5. Buy Cartomancy in the USA - or Buy Cartomancy in the UK  check out websites: www.bantamdell.com and www.stormwolf.com
'Cartomancy' picks up immediately from where 'A Secret Atlas' left off with Keles Anturasi having just been kidnapped by the Desai, his brother Jorim on the other side of the world with a long-lost civilisation and his sister, Nirati, being remarkably happy and active for someone who's been murdered.
A mysterious invader has begun to decimate the coast of Erumvirine and after a magical storm in Ixyll, Ciras and Borosan find themselves searching alone for the empress and Moraven Tolo wakes up as someone else. As the invasion intensifies and the ghosts of the past don't appear to be as ghostly as first thought.
While 'A Secret Atlas' was something of a slow novel, with a lot of build-up and little in the way of things, I ended up giving much of a damn about, 'Cartomancy' has the benefit of having most of that build-up out of the way and as a result the plot starts to kick off instead. Again, it takes a little while for the scene to be set in every location because there are so many people all over the place, but once that happens events begin to rattle along at an entertaining pace.
Stackpole certainly knows his stuff. The plot is layered and ensures the personal stories of the characters don't get lost in the overall, stopping-the-end-of-the-world but I found I had a problem with the execution of it all. Firstly, the fact that characters are so far apart meant that we hopped from one to the other, checking in and spending a few pages with one before moving on to the next.
The Anturasi family alone are spread over three continents and the overall result of so many characters to follow means that half of them there wasn't the time to care less about them.
Cyron came across as wet rather than the compassionate ruler he should have been. Pyrust was similarly dull for no good reason. While Tolo actually improved on the previous book when he became a heartless bastard, but that took a while because I first off was just wondering why the hell one character had switched to first person narrative, something that hadn't been in the first book at all. Stackpole is a good enough writer that it worked well enough, but I was distracted from the book itself as I tried to work out why it had happened.
Overall, the book didn't do a whole lot for me, exciting no great emotion either way. I'm the sort of reader who will ditch a bad novel after 100 pages, but that wasn't the case here. I ploughed on to the end happily enough, just not enough of it stuck for my liking.
Fans of 'A Secret Atlas' will devour this as a better book that the first, but I personally couldn't shake the voice that reminded me he's done quite a few spin-off novels, nine 'Star Wars' books are listed in the front. Snob that I am, I'm a little dismissive of books where the writer didn't come up with the idea and I rather got the impression from 'Cartomancy' that he's got into that habit. There's ability for sure and enough complexity to keep me interested, but it just lacked passion.
Tom Lloyd-Williams
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