Retribution Falls (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #1)

by Chris Wooding

Frey is the captain of the Ketty Jay, leader of a small and highly dysfunctional band of layabouts. An inveterate womaniser and rogue, he and his gang make a living on the wrong side of the law, avoiding the heavily armed flying frigates of the Coalition Navy. With their trio of ragged fighter craft, they run contraband, rob airships and generally make a nuisance of themselves. So a hot tip on a cargo freighter loaded with valuables seems like a great prospect for an easy heist and a fast buck. Until the heist goes wrong, and the freighter explodes. Suddenly Frey isn't just a nuisance anymore - he's public enemy number one, with the Coalition Navy on his tail and contractors hired to take him down. But Frey knows something they don't. That freighter was rigged to blow, and Frey has been framed to take the fall. If he wants to prove it, he's going to have to catch the real culprit. He must face liars and lovers, dogfights and gunfights, Dukes and daemons. It's going to take all his criminal talents to prove he's not the criminal they think he is ...

• ISBN10: 0345522583
• ISBN13: 9780345522580
• Publish Date: 26 April 2011 (first published 18 June 2009)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Spectra Books
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[celinenyx]

When I was still a little girl, I took the book Poison from the library, by some guy named Chris Wooding. Its metaphysical awareness completely blew my childish mind. Poison immediately became one of my favourite books of all time, and I rented the library book over and over.

Fast-forward ten years, and I find a Chris Wooding book in a London Waterstone's. Will Retribution Falls be just as good as Poison was?

It's safe to say that Retribution Falls didn't blow my mind or completely changed the way I look at the world, as Poison did. Retribution Falls is the story of an airship full of society cast-offs that get into a whole bunch of trouble and go through many adventures.

For me the book had a slightly steampunkish feel, with all the grimy airships and old-school appliances. It's set in a fantasy reality where there is "aerium", something that makes all of the airships float. The world is barely habitable, and by air is the only way to reach many cities.

Maybe it's because I associate Chris Wooding with children's books, but when I first started reading Retribution Falls I had to keep reminding myself that I was reading an adult book. It's clearly meant for adults - there is some swearing and graphic situations, but maybe because of the theme (airship pirates) I felt like I was reading something much younger. It doesn't help that the captain, Fray, has major commitment issues and generally doesn't feel like an actual grown up person.

The crew of the Ketty Jay is a collection of war veterans, someone as smart as a spoon, and multiple people trying to outrun their past, the law, or both. I quite liked some of the main characters, especially Jez, a woman that's not quite as human as she'd like to be, and Crake, a daemonist. They're also the two least stereotyped characters, apart from Fray - the rest of the crew consists mostly of one-trick ponies, that act the same throughout the book and don't have any development. The secondary characters mostly acted as comic relief, which was pretty well done, but I was hoping to have just that little bit more meat to the characters.

Retribution Falls cuts right to the chase, not bothering with any intermittent-dialogue or "after two weeks of flying we were at this and this town...". In almost sixteenth-century fashion, the trying to string chapters together is completely absent. Everything in the book is story, nothing more and nothing less. On one hand this means that you don't feel like you're reading a hundred pages of nothing - on the other hand shit gets confusing. Some times I'd have liked an indication where we are now and what's happening, because I had to stop to think about this which takes away from the reading flow.

Although not as innovative and life-changing as Poison was for me, Retribution Falls is a very enjoyable fantasy read. If you like the sound of "airship pirates", this is the book for you.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

While sky piracy is not what Darian Frey wants, fate has not been kind to the captain of the Ketty Jay. Along with his crew, Frey finds himself involved in an attack that goes horribly wrong resulting in them being on the run. Hunted by the elite Century Knights and bounty hunters, the airship goes into hiding in the hidden legendary pirate town Retribution Falls but only to discover just how deep this conspiracy runs.

Most of the people would compare this book to the cult classic TV show Firefly; a band on misfits on the wrong side of the law struggling to make things right. Sure there are some similarities and that was the main reason I picked up this book but it really isn’t the same. Firefly has these great complex characters that somehow gel together really well, but in this book while they do seem to mesh well, the complexity of the characters is missed. There are some characters like Jez and Malvery who have the complexity to make great characters but I feel like the author Chris Wooding showed his hand way too early by revealing big secrets that tell the reader just who they are. I’m sure there are other secrets to these characters but with such a big reveals, it’s lost something and now the characters are just two dimensional.

Retribution Falls is a fast paced adventure story but without anything special about the characters, it just becomes an entertaining book with no surprises. Captain Frey is the most annoying, scared character I’ve met in an adventure story; I really don’t know how you can lead a group of pirates if all you want to do is run and hide. This really destroyed the book for me; while there was a hint at complex characters (up until half way through), the coward of a captain really didn’t work for me, especially in the situation they have gotten themselves into.

Adventure trying to be a conspiracy of world domination worked in parts but it wasn’t as strong as it needed to be to make this book special. The narrative and plotting was so basic that most things felt predictable and empty threats. This story continues onto two more books in the series and while entertaining there is nothing holding my interest.

A homage to Firefly that fell flat on its face, this book is a good example of what not to do; never reveal to much of the characters and don’t try to be complex in such a short period of time; it doesn’t work. I won’t be continuing the series unless I hear good reports about it. While I did enjoy reading this book, it really lacked in so many ways. The target audience wasn’t even for young adults so I’m not sure what Chris Wooding was trying to do with this book, but for me it didn’t work.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/03/22/book-review-retribution-falls/