Contains spoilers for the Crescent City series
Click below for my reviews of each book in the series:
We first meet Tharion Ketos as the somewhat douchey but still likable merman in House of Earth and Blood. He contributes a little to the plot and adds a gateway for some worldbuilding for the Mer, but is otherwise just a background character.
In House of Sky and Breath, his character moves to the forefront with a whole POV. Yet it feels as though he never transcends his role as a background character into main character territory. And reading from a background character’s POV is…well, boring.
Let’s talk through this.
1. There are no character stakes for Tharion
I talk more about the broader concept of character stakes in this blog, but the gist is that characters need to have more to lose by acting on the plot than by not acting. When the inciting incident happens, it must push them toward the plot because the consequences would be worse if they refused.
Tharion Ketos is never given any stakes. We watch him do things and go places, but his story never follows its own arc. He has nowhere to go, because he doesn’t have an inciting incident or plot to act on. We just watch him kind of bumble around and complain about being engaged to the most oblivious Mer in existence. And a character without stakes is boring. I felt I was constantly asking myself, “Why am I reading from this character’s POV right now? What’s the point of this?”
It’s why Tharion’s POV in book 2 doesn’t become interesting until the end, because he finally does something. He ditches his situation and signs his life over to the Viper Queen in a questionable lapse of judgment. I was hoping this would make him more interesting to follow in House of Flame and Shadow, but alas, he was more useless to the plot in book 3.
2. Forgotten plot threads
This one isn’t Tharion’s fault.
In book 2, we get the Chekhov’s Gun of Tharion needing to be fully immersed in river water every 24 hours. (Quick refresh on Chekhov’s Gun: if a gun is hanging on the wall in act 1, it needs to go off in the next act – meaning, if you’re going to bother including something in the story, it should have a purpose). I felt it was definitely setting us up for some heartbreak later. I thought for sure Tharion was going to be in a situation where he’d have to either race against the clock, or choose between himself and someone he loved, etc.
What’d we get instead?
Nothing. It’s never mentioned in book 3 at all.
3. His POV added nothing we couldn’t have read from others’ perspectives instead
Tharion could’ve been a background character like Flynn or Dec and still did all the things he did. Usually, adding a POV adds something new or interesting to the storytelling (which I discuss more here), but we didn’t get that with Tharion.
For example, the Sathia plot.
The only reason this random plotline with Sathia makes sense is because it gives Tharion a heroic deed to do to make him likeable. Which he still could’ve done as a background character without the reader ever needing to actually read his POV. But it’s obvious to me that Sathia is only here to set up the next book, as many speculate that there will be another Crescent City book solely about Tharion.
Reading any of these scenes from Tharion’s perspective just added nothing new to the current story.
Going forward for Tharion Ketos
If there is another Crescent City book and it’s predominantly about Tharion Ketos, I really don’t think I’d want to read it, if I’m honest. I felt the development of his character profile was poorly executed, so these books never made me care enough about him to want to read an entire 800+ page book dedicated to him.
You can rest assured it’s not because of his personality or anything like that – I also have a character analysis about Nesta, who is an objectively unlikeable character that I enjoyed reading about anyway. I also talk about unlikeable versus poorly-written characters in general in this post.
Who knows, if the book comes out and some trusted reviewers tell me it’s better, maybe I’ll give it a try. But as of now, I’m not interested. A lot would need to be true for it to be worth it, and it doesn’t seem to be on that trajectory.
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