The Ace of Skulls by Chris Wooding

[Werthead]

Tales of the Ketty Jay Book 4: The Ace of Skulls

Vardia is being torn apart by a civil war between the religious sect known as the Awakeners and the government forces under the command of the Archduke. Despite helping start the war (inadvertently), Darian Frey and the crew of the Ketty Jay are trying steer clear of any fighting. However, when Frey decides to track down the missing Trinica Dracken, the crew find themselves with divided loyalties.

After four novels, it's time for The Tales of the Ketty Jay to bow out. The author had the choice between making the series an ongoing cycle of adventures or wrapping up the main plot to concentrate on other works, and chose the latter. Whilst this is bad news for fans of the series, it's certainly good to see a series reaching a definitive conclusion after a short, focused number of adventures.

This does cause some problems for The Ace of Skulls, however. In previous books it felt like Wooding was developing a large number of background elements, characters and factions to play a long game with. Having to wrap everything up in this fourth volume means the plot accelerator being slammed down and the concluding chapters taking on an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach. This means that a few plot elements get short shrift and are resolved in a slightly more perfunctory fashion than might be wished.

However, the most important thing in this series is the characters and their relationships, and Wooding wisely concentrates on these elements. All of the crewmembers of the Ketty Jay get their moment in the sun, whether it's Pinn's undergoing a gloriously narcissistic and insane odyssey of faith and selfishness, Crake finally resolving his family issues or Jez finally confronting her heritage in full. Secondary characters return, such as the Century Knights, and get a lot of juicy moments as well. In short, the character arcs of the series are resolved more than satisfactorily. Hell, even the ship's cat, Slag, gets his own subplot.

In terms of the story, we are again whisked across Vardia, from the capital city of Thesk to a vast, Mississippi-style delta and to exotic islands and back again. There are robberies, infiltrations of enemy bases and epic battles at snowcapped mountain villas. There are massive aerial engagements, dodgy mid-air boarding actions and, erm, fierce cat-to-mouse combat scenes deep in the bowels of aircraft. It's the sort of narrative that cries out for words such as 'romp' and 'fun'. As with its three forebears, The Ace of Skulls is a highly enjoyable action-adventure novel with some excellent characterisation. It's also resolutely not grimdark: whilst there are genuine moments of horror, ultimately the ending is positive (despite a couple of shocking, major deaths) and the series bows out on an emotional high.

The Ace of Skulls (****) is fun, well-characterised and a page-turning read. It's also trying to do a little bit too much in wrapping up a huge amount of material in a limited page space, but it manages to pull it off. And whilst Wooding does wrap most things up, there's certainly enough scope here for him to return to the world further down the line. Personally, I'd love to see a Century Knights spin-off.

 

[Gramm838]

I finished reading this yesterday and thought it was pretty good, but felt that their involvement in the full-on civil war was a bit OTT. I still enjoyed it though.

But then - I watched the movie Serenity on the train on the way home today, and, well, the two just seemed to merge; it felt like the Ketty Jay stuff is a very close take on Firefly.

Has anyone else made this connection?

 

[Werthead]

Yes, it's pretty much mentioned in every review of the series

I think it was partly deliberately, but Chris has also said he didn't intend it to be a 1:1 correlation, and I think he's correct in saying that the series is a lot more than 'just' a, 'Steampunk Airship Firefly cover'. There some pretty solid fantastical ideas in there of his own.

 

[Vertigo]

Excellent review @Werthead and I pretty much agree with your thoughts, though I'd say I didn't feel quite as rushed by events as you appear to have felt . My brief thoughts:


The Ace of Skulls provides an excellent conclusion to these Tales of the Ketty Jay. Civil war has come to Vardia and despite their best efforts Darian Frey and the crew of the Ketty Jay just can’t help getting caught up in it and, if he’s not careful, Frey might just find himself doing the right thing (though possibly for the wrong reasons).

This series started off feeling like a light-hearted, swashbuckling, steampunk adventure romp, a little dark in places but still essentially a lot of fun. Peter F Hamilton described it as “the kind of old fashioned adventure I didn’t think we were allowed to write any more,” a description that sums it up rather aptly. But, by the end, Wooding has done an exceptional job of developing all the major characters giving them depth and evoking the reader’s sympathy for them despite all of their very obvious failings. My only complaint here is that he sometimes pushes little too far into caricature, particularly in the case of Pinn. It’s also worth noting how unsexist the characters are with almost as many strong kick-ass female ones as male ones.

The ending when it came nicely tied everything up and, almost inevitably for a book like this, had everyone happily riding off into the sunset. Brilliant steampunk adventure; I’d love to see Wooding tackle some space opera, but so far I believe this is about as close as he has come to science fiction.


5/5 stars

 

[The Ace]

I have to admit that I enjoyed the series (the climax of, "The Black Lung Captain," raised a smile when a race of undead warriors who seemed hell-bent on the extinction of humanity.... well, you're probably better reading it for yourself).

Pinn and Harkness (a fool and a drunkard), seem to take care of the more extreme elements of the crew, and I find that they have a curiously balancing effect. I also have a soft spot for Bess, and was rather upset by the crewmember who didn't ride off into the sunset.

 

[Vertigo]

I have to admit that I enjoyed the series (the climax of, "The Black Lung Captain," raised a smile when a race of undead warriors who seemed hell-bent on the extinction of humanity.... well, you're probably better reading it for yourself).

Pinn and Harkness (a fool and a drunkard), seem to take care of the more extreme elements of the crew, and I find that they have a curiously balancing effect. I also have a soft spot for Bess, and was rather upset by the crewmember who didn't ride off into the sunset.

Yes I originally viewed them as a bit of a guilty pleasure but now I actually think that description does them a little injustice. Regarding the one crew member

Spoiler

I'm guessing you are referring to Slag which I was sad about but at least he got to leave a bit of himself behind. Funnily enough I've seen a few comments from people upset at his demise.