 Hello and welcome everyone, I'm Philip Magnus and today we're talking about Alex Knight the Far Wild. In disclaimer, Alex is a friend of mine and as such, I'm still going to destroy him if I don't enjoy his books. Sorry Alex. The good news is I do enjoy this one and I'm being honest because I say so. So what are you going to do on it, tough guy? Am I antagonising my audience? I hope so. Right, we're reviewing The Far Wild by Alex Knight. So how is this review going to go exactly? I know, five points. We're going to do five points about The Far Wild. And The Far Wild is a fantasy thriller. See what I did there? Yeah? Yeah? You like it? I hope so. Anyway, what does fantasy thriller mean? It means that it is borrowing conventions, the fantasy world is, from both genres. First off, we've got some very classical conventions in terms of worldbuilding. We've got empires, we've got kind of steampunky, airship technology and airships are connected to this scarcity of a particular resource which makes them run, makes them float. And then we've got this whole rush towards gaining more of this resource because we've got an empire and a kingdom, I believe. The two of them are competitors, have waged wars time and again against one another. And whoever finds more of this resource and manages to just overwhelm the other with airships is the winner. So that's the kind of world we live in. Now let us talk about the thriller elements. So The Far Wild, it is not a pleasant place. It is an unknown, as of yet, vastly under-researched part of the world, part of a new continent. It is teeming with dangers and horrifying, just horrifying animals which will eat you and just grin ear to ear without a second thought. In this world, our group of protagonists ends up, after their airship kind of ends up on the ground over reasons that I will not be going into because I'm not going to spoil the book, probably, for the most part. Maybe I'll spoil the book, but not in this particular element. What we need to know is there is an accident that brings the crew to this airship to the ground and they are left to fend for themselves in The Far Wild. You can see how this will be problematic, I hope, because you guessed it, a lot of things, almost all the things, want to freaking eat them. I mean, I would eat them, but that's only because I really like Hannibal. So we've got the thriller elements, survival in the world that is most unknown to them. And why do we care? Because the characters are very, very good indeed. I actually really like the characters. I did, swear to my mum I did, but why did I like them? Huh. Oh yes, we'll get to that, but first, this video is not sponsored by Audible, however, this book is an Audible original. Our second point then is that this book is an Audible original, which means fairly high production values and trio of really excellent narrators. Those three narrators are Peter Kenney, Stephanie Lane and Carlos Peer. And all three of them give excellent performances, which make a listening book worth it alone, based on that. Especially I have to say Peter Kenney, who's Senicio is an endlessly entertaining braggart, I would say. He is an adventurer and we'll get to him in a moment. What you need to know is great audio work, great narration. Not once was I pulled out by about delivery or by some unforeseen audio issue, some very annoying kind of behind the scenes thing on Audible's part. It makes for an excellent audiobook, audio drama almost with the three actors. It reminds me, in fact, of another one of my favourite audiobooks of recent memory, The Boneshot Daughter, which Osu had three narrators narrating for several main characters. I think in that case it was actually five main characters, but let's get back to the characters, which is our third point. I would like to bring up a very interesting discussion about flat characters and round characters, because my favourite character in this book, you've all mentioned Senicio, voiced by Peter Kenney, did I mention him before? Anyway, Senicio Soleiman Nicolao. Doesn't he? I nailed it without looking for the first time, might I add. Senicio is, in my opinion, a flat character. What you need to know is that a lot of people dismiss flat characters and there is this kind of mode about talking about characters, as if being a flat character is in some way bad. And I do not agree with that at all. I'm going to juxtapose our two protagonists, the main ones. I know there's a third one, but she is, in a way, this sort of secondary protagonist. She has the viewers to viewpoints throughout the novel and does perhaps the least out of the three, although she is by no means unlikeable. And she is also rather not conductive to this point that I would like to bring up about flatness and roundness. Now why do I think that we have one flat character and one round character? It is simply because our lovely hero, our braggart, our vagabond adventurer, consumer's adventurer, let's go with that, I like that better. He is, for the greatest part of the novel, unchanged. The way he speaks, the way he acts. There is a continual motivation that is very much undifferentiated, let's say. He begins at this point and except for a very small amount of change, just about at the end of the novel he ends, I would like to say, at the basically same point at which he began. And yet he is by far the most amusing character in that book. And probably my favorite character in the final world. He does not suffer in any way from this flatness that I have described. In fact, it gives him a great degree of comedic relief. It gives him a whole lot of agency and it allows the author to play around with him. To say that Sunicio is flat and Sunny is round is in no way a description of the quality of their characters. It is simply an examination of the distance that the two of them have gone through. In Sunny's case that distance is great. She begins as a nationalist's apprentice, basically a master's student in this university and she grows to an adventurer in her own right. Sunicio does not experience anyone near the amount of change that Sunicio does. His fixed character is already in place and his responses to the world are very much in line with what you come to expect over the first several chapters that you have spent already in Sunicio's head. Again, this is in no way reflective of the quality of the writing of these two characters. Both of them are very well-ridden and very entertaining, very easy to care for in their own way. If Sunny is the character who is in into this world, then Sunicio is the character who has lived and experienced this world and functions at the very extreme end of its crazy, wonky, adventurous, thrilling rules. As for the rest of the characters, they are a pleasant lot to follow and a whole lot of them have a wonderful time with Sunicio especially after he pushes someone off an airship. My favourite part about Sunicio is that while he is a braggart, he actually does have the skills necessary to show that this is not just empty arrogance and it's not just empty, is what I'm trying to say here. Sunicio knows his stuff and yeah, Sunicio is cool. This is really, let's amend the name of the point, Sunicio is cool. Our fourth point has to go a little in depth about all the wonderful and terrifying monsters because what would this novel, a love letter to Jurassic Park, be if not teaming with horrifying man-eating monstrosities? We have got a giant Commodore Dragon which just functions like a T-Rex. Let's get this straight. A lot of the monsters in this novel, not all, there are certainly a few unique ones but two of the main players, the Commodore Dragon and the Thunderbirds, very much will remind you of Jurassic Park's T-Rex and Velociraptors respectively. Both the Thunderbirds in the giant Commodore pay homage to those mainstays of popular culture and you will see in the Thunderbirds the same sinister intelligence that you might recall from either the Jurassic Park book or movie and both of these enemies are quite horrifying. I will say they do not make it easy for our protagonists to survive. They are stranger, more fantastic monsters still, creatures which can mimic the voices of humans and man-eating plants, nasty folks all around and of course the worst monster of all. Yes, I know, I was as shocked as you were and now it is time for our fifth and last point of this review and that one has everything to do with the humour. You might be getting a bit of a whiplash, first I mentioned Jurassic Park, a book that is decidedly not funny even though it might be I suppose in some ways described as a soft tile if what I've read about it was through I've never read Jurassic Park, sorry. But my point is, Jurassic Park is not exactly a funny book, it's not a humorous book. This one, however, is funny, it is irreverent, but never to the point of parody. A lot of the humour is situational, a lot of it stems from the dialogue between the characters no small part of it has to do with inherent ridiculousness of characters like Sinicio who is, in some ways, one could very easily describe him as asly bonkers. The way that the humour functions in this world, it establishes a lighter tone despite which you never feel like the stakes with these characters are not real, they always are. There always is a tension, but the tension is never between the humour and the danger in which our protagonists and supporting characters often find themselves. And that is no small deal, it is, I would argue, pretty difficult to pull off sometimes but Alex manages to do that without trouble, and that he deserves kudos. I do think that is no small feat, no small accomplishment. This is the conclusion, do I recommend this book? Well, I kind of have to, don't I? Not much that I hate you, I just want to rip it a new one, just want to destroy Alex entirely. I cannot, I can't do it. It's a good book, it's a very entertaining fantasy thriller. It's something that you will listen to and you will enjoy. Do I have any complaints? I would say that maybe there was a little bit too much introspection in some moments which made the action a little less immediate than it could have been. The twists are so coming. There are photos in Scheme which is classically thriller so if you've read plenty of thrillers in your lifetime you will see them coming which does not remove from the enjoyment of seeing them executed very, very well. With that in mind, I'm happy to recommend it and hopefully I will see you next week. If you enjoyed this video, please like it, share it, subscribe, ring that bell button somewhere, somewhere down below. Anyway, see you again next week. I'll be back with some more content. Until then, bye. This book is a notable original. Two points, two, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. What was I talking about?