Review: Caprion's Wings: A Novella set in the Land of the Harpy's (and before Book 3 of the The Cat's Eye Chronicles)
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 17, 2014
This short and intense novella centers on a young Harpy, Caprion, who comes from an elite family but who is having a hard time fulfilling his coming of age ritual. Moreover, he is plagued by disturbing dreams, where he seems drawn into discovering an evil being who is trapped on the Harpy Island, but who is driven to escape and kill Harpies. But when Caprion goes to the dungeons and caves where members of the sixth race are kept so that the Harpies can work on tehniques for killing them, he first runs across a young 6th race assassin who is  being prepared for death. She decides to help Caprion to find the demon, even though she believes that it will lead to their death, and Caprion promises her her freedom. After Caprion and the young assassin excape, the demon does as well and begins to hunt down the Matriarch who rules the Harpies. As Caprion goes to the ground where the Demon lives and where the Matriarch sleeps, it seems unlikely that the hunt will be sucessful. But he must try.This novella is quite nice: a tight narrative is told primarily from Caprion's point of view, and the action is pretty much non-stop. We learn about the characters by what the do rather than by what they say.  From a technical point of view, the action on the book precedes that in book 3 of the series, although i read it immediately after the 3rd novel. There are not plot elements that conflict. If I had read Carion's Wings before Book 3, I would have understood a bit more about Caprion when he enters the narrative, but lacking the background did not interfere with my enjoyment.All in all, this series is coming into focus and order: we are seeing characters in acton and learning about them that way, and there is less reliance on having characters just tell us about what is happening. "Show me; don't tell me" is winning the day.I eagerly await the release of Book 4 this summer (2014).