Threading the Needle

The Ley / Erenthrall #2

by Joshua Palmatier

The Nexus the hub created by the Prime Wielders to harness the magical power of the ley lines for the city of Erenthrall, the Baronial Plains, and the world beyond has Shattered, the resultant pulse cascading through the system and leaving Erenthrall decimated, partially encased in a massive distortion.
The world has fared no better: auroral storms plague the land, transforming people into creatures beyond nightmare; silver-white lights hover over all of the major cities, the harbinger of distortions that could quicken at any moment; and quakes brought on by the unstable ley network threaten to tear the earth apart. The survivors of this apocalypse have banded together in desperate groups, both in the remains of Erenthall and in small enclaves beyond the city, scrounging for food and resources in an ever more dangerous world.
Having survived the initial Shattering, Wielder Kara Tremain and ex-Dog Allan Garrett have led their small group of refugees to the Hollow, a safe haven in the hills on the edge of the plains. But the ley system is not healing itself. Their only option is to repair the distortion that engulfs Erenthrall and to fix the damaged ley lines themselves. To do that, they ll have to enter a city controlled by vicious bands of humans and non-humans alike, intent on keeping what little they ve managed to scavenge together.
But as soon as they enter the streets of Erenthrall, they find themselves caught up in the maelstrom of violence, deception, and betrayal that the city has descended into including the emergence of a mysterious and powerful cult calling themselves the White Cloaks, whose leader is known as Father....
He is the same man who once led the terrorist group called the Kormanley and brought about the Shattering that destroyed the world!"

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction

464 pages, Hardcover

First published July 5, 2016

About the author

Joshua Palmatier started writing science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories in the eighth grade, when the teacher assigned a one page Twilight Zone-ish short story. He wrote a story about Atlantis. It was from the perspective of one of the inhabitants as he escaped in a spaceship, watching his world being destroyed by water from one of the viewports of the ship. He got an A. Joshua hasn't stopped writing since.

"The Skewed Throne" is Joshua's first published novel, but it's the fourth novel he's written. The sequels--"The Cracked Throne" and "The Vacant Throne"--are now all available. His next series--comprising the novels "Well of Sorrows," "Leaves of Flame," and "Breath of Heaven"--was initially published under the pseudonym Benjamin Tate, but is being released in June 2016 under his real name. He is currently hard at work on the third book in his latest series, "Reaping the Aurora," with the first book "Shattering the Ley" now available and the second "Threading the Needle" due out in July 2016. He's also managed to write a few short stories, included in the anthologies "Close Encounters of the Urban Kind," "Beauty Has Her Way," "River," and "Apollo's Daughters."

Joshua is also the founder of a small press called Zombies Need Brains, which is focused on producing SF&F themed anthologies. There are two anthologies currently available--"Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs Aliens" and "Temporally Out of Order"--with two new anthologies due in August 2016 titled "Alien Artifacts" and "Were-". Find out more about Zombies Need Brains at www.zombiesneedbrains.com.

Bibliography: Novels:

Throne of Amenkor series:
The Skewed Throne
The Cracked Throne
The Vacant Throne

Well of Sorrows series:
Well of Sorrows
Leaves of Flame
Breath of Heaven (forthcoming)

Novels of The Ley:
Shattering the Ley
Threading the Needle (July 2016)
Reaping the Aurora (forthcoming)

Bibliography: Short Stories:

"Mastihooba" in Close Encounters of the Urban Kind edited by Jennifer Brozek (APEX).
"Tears of Blood" in Beauty Has Her Way edited by Jennifer Brozek (Dark Quest).
"An Alewife in Kish" (as Benjamin Tate) in After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar edited by Joshua Palmatier & Patricia Bray (DAW).
"The River" in River edited by Alma Alexander (Dark Quest).

Bibliography: As Editor:

After Hours: Tales From the Ur-Bar (DAW)
The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity (DAW)
Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs Aliens (ZNB)
Temporally Out of Order (ZNB)
Alien Artifacts (ZNB; forthcoming)
Were- (ZNB; forthcoming)

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up 'Threading the Needle' without realizing that it was the second in a series, and I tried to give it some slack, considering that I didn't read the beginning of the story. Still, even for a second book, I felt like it had remarkably little dramatic impetus.

I did enjoy the setting, which meshed post-apocalyptic fiction with epic fantasy. This world previously ran on a system of 'ley lines' - natural forces organized by magic wielders into a network. Unfortunately, as the story opens, this network has recently crashed, with disastrous results. The city of Erenthrall is now shattered into 'shards' - separated from each other, with time running differently inside each of them, and impassable without special abilities. The accessible parts of the city are taken over by different gangs - one of werewolves, one of feral children, etc. A group of former ley line workers is c0mmitted to trying to repair the damage, but it's a big task, and one that's not made easier by the fact that there are large numbers of people - including the inhabitants of the village that's sheltering them - that believe that the ley should never have been messed with to start with. And it's hard to argue that the 'magic' users aren't actually to blame.

So, it's a decent set-up, I thought. But then, well, some stuff happens, and some more stuff happens, and then some more.... and I just didn't feel invested enough in the characters or in what the eventual resolution might be. (There isn't any resolution in this volume either... there's more to come.)

Many thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for the opportunity to check out a new-to-me author. As always, my opinions are solely my own.

[Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nach der Katastrophe, die sich am Ende des ersten Bandes ereignet hat, erinnert mich der zweite Band an eine Dystopie im Fantasy-Gewand. Die verschiedensten Fraktionen versuchen mit den Folgen klarzukommen, doch das Ausmaß der Katastrophe wird am Ende sogar noch schlimmer. Ich bin gespannt, wie die Geschichte in Band 3 ihr Ende findet.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read quite a few book twos over the years. (Books two? Books twos?) Most of them are sequels to good novels, because why else would I be reading the second installment, right? Usually the second one is good but not quite as great as the original(Wise Man's Fear, Red Seas Under Red Skies), or it equals the original(Firefight, Chamber of Secrets) and sometimes it even surpasses it(Words of Radiance). However, in the last case, the original was already pretty dang good to begin with.
This may be the first sequel that is better than the original where the original wasn't very good. (My review of Shattering The Ley is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... I'm still 100% behind it) I decided to pick up the sequel because of my love for the worldbuilding, but I wasn't expecting much.
It's like Palmatier read my review, was like 'this guy has a point' and tried his hardest to fix it in this one. Shattering the Ley had lots of annoying time-jumps that took away the credibility, and there are none here. Shattering the Ley had characters I didn't care about, and hello feelings, good to see you. Shattering the Ley had stunted prose, it's way cleaner here. Shattering the Ley had one of the worst love triangles I have ever seen, and it's simply not there in this book. There are very mild shades of it near the end between Marcus and Kara, but I got the feeling that it was more because they used to be lovers and there's still some of those feelings left. There is never doubt that Kara will choose Cory over him any day. The ending is better and definitely more satisfactory. What I loved about the first one was part five, where it had a very fantasy post-apocalyptic feel to it; this book expands on that to great effect. All of that earns it an extra star because this one is way better.
However, it's just one. The reason why?
First of all, the ending, while still better than Ley's, is still not up to my usual standards. There are still lots of threads hanging, both from the first and the second one, to great annoyance. Like last time, the way the big bad of the novel is dealt with... it leaves some things to be desired. In addition to that, the book just builds up to too much; Palmatier is very generous with his perspective switches and not only are they not always necessary, they also build up to way too much, more than he can deal with.
Finally, and this may be a personal thing; Shattering the Ley took place in a weird world, some sort of futuristic fantasy where they still use swords on the one hand but on the other hand, they can build buildings with magic and it feels very futuristic. I loved that, it was so much fun. While there's still plenty of it here, the extra(and much needed!) emphasis on character takes away from all the fun I was having with the world.
It could also be because at the time, Shattering the Ley was the weirdest fantasy novel I had read and I wasn't used to much, and compared to the weird stuff I've been reading now(The Mirror Empire, The Fifth Season), Erenthrall is pretty normal.
However, it's still got that weird charm about it that I love so much, and it does all the right things from the first book right again, except for the extra worldbuilding. It plays with all the right vs wrong-cliches by adding huge layers of moral complexity, and reading about the technicality of the magic and the ley being overused... I haven't read stuff like that before and I happily eat it up. Plus, the fantasy post-apocalyptic feel, it works really well.
I am way more excited to read the third installment than I was for this one, because if the pattern continues, it should get five stars. Palmatier, I hope you read my previous review and if you did, I hope you're reading this one too. Make the next one the best one, please!
Because I will definitely pick it up, and I'll have high expectations!

[Pamela Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starting off where "Shattering the Ley" ended, "Threading the Needle" takes the reader much deeper into the world surrounding the city of Erenthrall. This world was been cast into utter turmoil. Due to overuse and misuse, the main source of power, known as The Ley, goes completely haywire resulting in tremendous earthquakes that do more than just rip the ground apart, but are the result of the power of the Ley redirecting itself, making it not just unstable, but unusable by almost everyone who's survived the initial shattering.

Opposing factions spring up almost immediately. Kill or be killed becomes the norm. Unfortunately, those who are most qualified to help return things to some level of normalcy are also the ones who were part of the initial problem. It seems everyone wants to either kill them for causing the shattering in the first place, or kidnap them and use them for their own nefarious purposes.

Josh's world building was in high gear for this book, which I both enjoyed and found a bit annoying. There are A LOT of characters here and A LOT is going on at once and sometimes it just feels like it's too much to take in. I had a difficult time keeping track of who was who and sadly, found myself skipping over some of the more descriptive sections just to get on with the action. The kidnapping, release and/or escape sequences were a bit overdone. I understand what Josh was trying to do here, but I think the book could have been just as enjoyable without so many details.

All that aside, I'd still recommend this series to those who love an epic fantasy-themed quest with clashing swords, high stone walls, explosions, and a deadly and blinding white fire. The central characters are certainly in for the adventure of a lifetime as they try to make good of all the bad going on around them - and they still have another book to go before all is said and done.

I'm looking forward to finding out how all of this is resolved in the final book of the trilogy, Reaping the Aurora.

[Tea · Rating 3 out of 5]

At this point I'm too invested in the story to give up, but I found Palmatier's sentence structure maddening. The excess of dependent clauses – often, multiple dependent clauses – significantly diminished my enjoyment of getting to see what happened after the Shattering. It wasn't that many of the sentences were hard to parse; they were just annoying.

What was frequently hard to understand at times was the dialogue. Ambiguous, at times, absent attribution frequently left me wondering who was talking. I was few chapters in before I decided it was probably deliberate.

(I don't recall if either of these things was an issue with the first book; the issues I had with that were different.)

That said, the story told in this book was a great follow-up to the one told in . More importantly, it was a stronger story. This time around, Palmatier did a much better job of showing what was going on and why.

The characters were also more fully drawn, though I still feel as if I don't understand Kara as well as I'd like.

[Beth Elersich · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, I discovered after purchasing, is the second in a three book series. It was like slogging through mud for the first third of the book, because references to names, places and occurrences were completely foreign to me. But I persevered and am glad I did. Once I was able to discern who was who, what that meant, and where everything was, I was able to settle in to an enjoyable read. I’ve read nothing from this author before, so I knew nothing of his style. I found that the trend of not knowing what was going on continued throughout with explanations coming too late. The extremely detailed writing could probably have been tweeted a bit and the end was kind of rushed considering the rest of the book. I doubt that I will read book three because this style is not to my taste. That said, I must comment on the story line, which I felt was very enjoyably different.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was received for free from the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Threading the Needle is the sequel to Shattering the Ley.

This epic fantasy novel by Joshua Palmatier is not a book to be selected lightly. It is well written and richly detailed, but at 498 pages just itself, it is a serious commitment, without taking into account it is a part of a series. If you like involved stories as intricate and rich as a woven tapestry, this is definitely the book for you. You will not be disappointed. It is full of action, danger, and intrigue, the interplay between characters and social groups understandable and interesting.

Threading the Needle is about survival after a catastrophic collapse of a complex magic system and the society that it sustained. You have groups just trying to survive, others grabbing at power previously out of their reach, and some, like Kara Tremain, who foresee that the danger from the magical collapse is not over and are looking for a way to correct the damage before the unstable mage energy—or ley—destroys all that the survivors have managed to rebuild and even the world itself. All of them are dealing with a scarcity of resources and unexpected changes in their reality…and sometimes their person…due to the magical fallout.

I must confess that I had not read Shattering the Ley before undertaking Threading the Needle. This made reading the book a little bit of a challenge, but not as much as you would think. For the most part the author did a great job adding refresher detail to this book that made up for any gaps in my knowledge due to not reading the previous one. There were only a few places toward the end where I found myself a little lost as the intense action did not allow for the type of exposition that would have made things more clear to me. This did not greatly impact my enjoyment of the book or my ability to follow the story.

To be truthful, there was very little I did not enjoy about this book. However, it did trigger a few of my pet-peeves.

The first one is the formatting of the text. It was sloppy and at times confusing, with bad breaks or no breaks where there should be. This is likely because what I received was an advance reader copy, or at least I hope it is, and is all on the publisher, not the author. For the most part this was just a minor annoyance and did not prevent me from enjoying the book.

The second one was a copyediting issue, little inconsistencies that pulled me from the story. The biggest of these was toward the end of the book, when the wrong character’s name was used in a pretty important scene. I was able to figure out what was going on, but this distraction was a little too visible and pulled me from the story at a critical point.

The final pet peeve, unfortunately, is my mother of all pet peeves and is likely the primary reason this book did not receive 5 stars from me. Names. Names are very, very important. They need to fit the universe you are creating and not interfere with the readers suspension of disbelieve. I have a real problem immersing myself in a book completely when names are discordant with my expectations. In a second-world epic fantasy I expect to see fantastic names…as in names I would not generally see if I picked up a phone book or a newspaper. Names that are not a usual part of my everyday world. This goes for both people and places. When I see names I do not expect to see in this fantasy realm—particularly if they are side by side with names that do look like they belong there—they create a disruption in the journey. For me, this is particularly amplified when everyday names appear intermingled with fantasy names. This might not seem a big deal. I mean, if the story is good enough you won’t even notice after a while, right? To some extent yes. But what this mingling of names does, for me at least, is set up expectations. When I see recognizable names in a fantasy setting the back of my mind starts looking for signs that this is the world I live in and when something is there in the description that echoes that potential my mind latches onto it and gets snagged, which means I’m not completely focused on the story being told. Did I enjoy the story? Most definitely, but at the same time I was always conscious of the names.

All in all, this was a fantastic book, in all regards of the word. The strength and skill of the storytelling kept me engaged and the concepts and details of the history were intriguing. Threading the Needle is well worth the investment of both time and resources.

[Jessica Bronder · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Nexus has fallen and the ley magic is causing trouble. Sections of Erenthrall are stuck in different times, creatures and humans are fighting and scraping by to survive, and a new cult has risen to power. Kara Tremain is trying to keep her little group alive but is also trying to come up with a plan to restore the Nexus. But this is not an easy task with so much violence around her.

I did not realize that this was the second book in a series. It did take a few minutes for me to catch up but from there I easily followed along. The story revolves around Kara and Allan as they try and gather supplies for them and others in the Hollow. Kara is trying to figure out some way to restore the Nexus but she runs into the White Cloaks. They don’t want the Nexus fixed and have created an unstable version for themselves.

This is a pretty good story. There is a lot of action as people are trying to survive in the collapse of the ley magic. Since this is part of a series, the story is not finished at the end of the book. I am curious to see how this all started and what happens in the next book.

I received Threading the Needle from the publisher free of charge. This has in no way influenced my opinion of this book.

[Melissa J. Katano · Rating 5 out of 5]

The World Building continues in this second of the LEY novels, weaving a rich, dense tapestry of lives and events.

But.... the pattern isn't complete. Events have brought forth old enemies, and is making uneasy allies of factions.

The story continues to center on Allan and Kara, and to a lesser extent on Morelle, Allan's daughter.

Things have been set up for book 3 that have me impatiently waiting for it to be released next year....*sigh*

[Samuel Lubell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed in this as I liked the first one better. See my review at http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.p...

[J.L.]

Like the first book in this trilogy, this novel is incredibly well-written. The world is intricately crafted, and it's awesome to see what is essentially a post-apocalyptic novel set in a high-fantasy world.

Unfortunately, the major problems I had with the first novel followed me here. I have absolutely no emotional connection with any of the characters, and that lack killed my motivation to keep following their adventures. About 1/5 of the way through this book, I realized that I while I did want to know what happened in the story, I didn't want to go on the journey with them.

I highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in non-traditional high fantasy, with a unique magic system. I sincerely hope you connect with the characters more than I do.