Well, that bingo card is keeping me motivated— ‘Part 2’ is sitting right there.
And my need to procrastinate from packing and moving. That too.
One of the more tricky things about reviewing books from a series is that I’m always wary about giving too much away. I think this will be a constant issue for the Obernewtyn Chronicles, since there are seven books. So while I’ll try not to reveal too many big spoilers from the current book I’m going over, the previous ones are fair game. Just a heads up.
In my opinion, The Farseekers is where the Obernewtyn Chronicles starts to find its feet. As I mentioned in the previous review, there was an awful lot of scene-setting and world-building in Obernewtyn that ended up not being very well utilized. The first book turned out to be a very personal story for Elspeth—and perhaps unexpectedly for Rushton—and not one concerned with the greater setting.
The Farseekers remedies that: this is where we finally start to see the world that has been left behind in the aftermath of the Great White, and it’s not the most politically stable nor the safest place for Misfits. In the two years since the events of the first book, Obernewtyn has become a refuge for Misfits and animals alike. Isolated from the Council by their remote location in the highlands, the Misfits have started to self-organize, collecting themselves into different guilds based on their psychic powers and exploring the extent of their Talents.
But by keeping themselves isolated, the Misfits have found themselves unable to keep tabs on the movements of the Council and Herder Faction. It has also meant that they have been less able to find and assist Misfits in other parts of the Land who may be in strife. So when the Technoguild reveals that they have picked up signs of a powerful Talent that may need rescuing from a new Beforetime site full of artifacts and books, Elspeth uses her power as the Guildmistress of the Farseekers to propose an expedition to the lowlands to see what they can find. Rushton is reluctant to let the plan go ahead due to its potential danger, but he soon finds himself outvoted*. Poor Rushton.
The wheels come off almost immediately when they discover that the Council plans to visit Obernewtyn early, which leads to their expedition splitting into. One half rushes off to warn everyone about the Council’s presence in the highlands, while the other half continues to the lowlands to recover this new Misfit whose own Talents may surpass Elspeth’s own. But nothing is ever straightforward, and while Elspeth’s splinter group has every intention of heading straight to the Beforetime ruins, they find themselves getting embroiled in lowland politics. The latter is thanks to a man who, I happen to think, has a very fine choice of a name.
They also learn who re–directed the Council’s attention to Obernewtyn.
While I rated Obernewtyn quite highly, The Farseekers improved on it in many ways. Not only is all the world-building put to good use, but both Obernewtyn and the lowlands feel like proper, lived-in places. We are introduced to many more characters, who quickly become better developed than those introduced in Obernewtyn. The introduction of the Guilds and their organisation archives the same thing the introduction and the first few chapters did in the first book: it lets us in on a lot of background information very quickly without feeling awkward. In Obernewtyn, we were introduced to the state of affairs hundreds of years after the Great White. In The Farseekers, we get to see more of the kind of people who have survived in this new society.
Elspeth herself is the Guildmistress of the Farseekers, whose main skill involves conversing psychically over varying geographic distances. She is also a Beastspeaker, someone who can converse psychically with animals. There are also Healers, Future-Tellers, Empaths and Concerers, whose skills can all be intuited by their names alone. At this stage, we don’t know exactly why these psychic powers have started manifesting in Misfits, but all hints seem to point to the Great White perhaps giving humanity’s collective third eye a bit of a squeegee.
And then we come to the Technoguilders, who appear to have a sort of machine empathy, alongside a touch of telekinesis. The byline is that they are really damned good with mechanics and computers. They’re also living in a world where most people have reverted to an agrarian, almost Armish state; a world where only developed technology to be found is usually located in located in old Beforetime ruins. These are the same Beforetimers who triggered a nuclear strike that nearly killed the entirety of civilization. And as Elspeth discovered near the end of Obernewtyn, not all of the Beforetime Weaponmachines are totally inactive.
Oh. Oh no.
I mean, I love the Technoguilders, but they can be chaos incarnate. Especially when you remember, that they, like most of the Misfits at Obernewtyn, are mostly teenagers.
Another of my favourite characters, as I mentioned in the previous review, is of course Maruman. It seems obvious that Maruman would choose to follow Elspeth around because she is a Beastspeaker. That, and he was hungry and teenagers are persuadable. But there is more to it than that; in this new age but post-holocaust world where future-telling has a marked success rate, prophecies have started bouncing around. And it’s the future-tellers amongst the beasts—including Maruman, in his queer fits—that have visions of Elspeth.
Have you not wondered at the coincidences and chances in your life? Have you not felt that there were great forces at work about you – forces for good and for great ill? Have you not felt the purpose in your life burning?
Oh. Oh no. Again. This can’t be doing Elspeth’s sense of self-determination any good. Additionally, if we remember back to Obernewtyn, Maruman told Elspeth that a ‘Guanette’ bird had said his destiny was twined with hers. Guess who’s linked to his fits?
If I were to make any criticism though, it’s with the pacing. The first section of the book is actually slow going, but the latter parts sometimes progress at almost suffocating speeds. This was not an issue in the first book but it is something that, unfortunately, I remember seeing more of as I progressed through the series. We’ll see if that holds up through the re-read..
As for its place in the series, The Farseekers is where the Obernewtyn Chronicles shifts out of first gear and gives you a taste of what is yet to come.
Again, as stated above, for cbr16bingo, this is Part 2.
*Poor bloody Rushton. I keep on reading him as some world-weary 35-year-old. He’s 21