The Rook

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

“Dear You,
The body you are wearing used to be mine.”

This novel is the story of a brand new Myfanwy Thomas. This new Myfanwy Thomas wakes up standing in a rainy park to find four dead bodies lying around her. Without any knowledge of who she is—or any memories whatsoever—she fumbled around in her coat pocket for some clue as to who she is. She finds a letter whose author identifies herself as the original Myfanwy Thomas.

As you can see, The Rook grabs you from the very beginning. The above quote is the book’s opening sentence. It is an ambitious beginning, for it promises an epic tale. It is a lot for any novel to live up to. For the most part, The Rook does.

I love this book. I mean, I really, really love it. The author does a wonderful job of telling Myfanwy’s tales (original and new). The reader is learning everything about this world at the same time the new Myfanwy does. Through dozens of letters left behind by the original, Myfanwy learns of the role she must fulfill if she is to survive her new life. She is, she learns, a Rook, a member of the Court of the Checquy, a secret British organization who deals almost entirely in the realm of the supernatural (more Mi-5 than Men in Black). She also learns that she has been betrayed by a fellow member of the Court.

The best thing about this novel is the way the author, Daniel O’Malley, feels Myfanwy’s way through her new life. She knows nothing of the people—or the horrors—that her predecessor dealt with on a daily basis. These people and these things must become familiar to her. She stumbles through them, but in an earnest and mostly realistic way. Character-wise, the new Myfanwy Thomas is the best a new Myfanwy Thomas could be.

Living a secret life is not easy. This is especially true when one is thrust into that life with no safety net and no time for learning the ropes. The way Myfanwy navigated the Checquy felt very realistic to me. Even though I don’t fully buy that Myfanwy’s secret could have been kept throughout the Court, I was willing to ride with it. The author made me want to believe. That is a very good thing.

I also love the way O’Malley wrote Myfanwy’s relationships with people. They were all very different, and it was interesting to read her personality as it came across via her interactions with different people. In this way, we were able to see the development and multifaceted pieces of her. The reader is witness to the makings of a person.

We get to see her make a friend, and feel all her nervousness and joy at finding a person with whom she feels a real connection. That part of the novel is one of the best.

At the same time, in a very different way, we learn the original Myfanwy Thomas. Unlike the new woman, the original is someone we neither see nor feel in this novel. Instead, we hear the opinions her colleagues in the Court had of her as spoken to the new Myfanwy. We also have the letters she left behind for her successor.

The letters. They were brilliant. They may annoy certain readers because they are, I admit, a bit of a copout, a form of information dumping. More than information, though, they tell you who the original Myfanwy Thomas was. They tell the reader why she was betrayed. They show us what was really important to her. A fair assessment of the woman is that she was not a particularly good person. She shied away from responsibility and seemed to lack drive. She was a disappointment. Yet, she did this one thing, this one honorable thing: she researched her butt off, wrote these letters, and prepared the new Myfanwy to survive and thrive. The time and care and diligence required to write those letters was heroic. It was, without hyperbole, one of the most selfless and loving things any human being could do for any other. So she couldn’t have been that terrible a person, right?

The Rook is Myfanwy’s story. Sure, there are battles and murders and treason and treachery, but this story is all about Myfanwy. There are times when the action dies down and the story seems to meander, but at its heart, The Rook is the tale of development of Myfanwy. That never meanders. It is full and rich and complete. For this reason, I hope there is no sequel. Myfanwy’s story is fine. I hope other novels about the Checquy revolve around the other characters, who were great. The other members of the Court, especially the Gestalts, were fascinating. The portrayal of the Eckhart family was very poignant. Shantay and Bronwyn and Alrich and Ingrid—especially Ingrid—were all great. I’d love to read more about each of them.

The Rook wasn’t perfect. There were some things that bothered me. Four stand out, and they are the reason I did not give The Rook an A+ rating. First is a moment when Myfanwy references Grease. I find it unlikely that the original Myfanwy would have ever seen it, but it was impossible for the new one to know anything about it.

Within the same scene, she thinks, “This is clearly a person experienced in the realms of supernatural warfare but who has had practically nothing to do with normal people. Especially girls.” Myfanwy, herself, knows nothing of normal people, even girls. It is why her finding a friend is impactful. This threw me out of the novel for a short while because it was very much out of place and out of character for a woman the author had previously crafted very carefully.

Third is a scene about a quarter of the way into the novel that really threw me out for a while. Throughout the entire novel, the only scene which is not Myfanwy-centric occurs in the aftermath of her calling for a meeting of the Court. We read each other member of the Court learning of the meeting. That was fine. It actually fits with the novel. However, after we go back to Myfanwy, O’Malley interjects a random sentence: “Alrich woke up.” Then it’s back to Myfanwy. Who is Alrich? Eventually we find out, but that was random and just doesn’t at all fit with the rest of the novel. From that moment, it was clear to me that the author loves the Alrich character. His introduction hurt the novel, though.

The final thing was a biggie for me, but it wasn’t enough to make me not love this book. In describing the Checquy’s ventures into America, O’Malley wrote of an operative who, “had noticed that the natives had a far higher incidence of powered births.” Really, man? And, of course, we have the Magical Negro: “Slaves were rigorously screened and purchased. Upon their integration into the Croatoan, they were granted their freedom. Some operatives spoke out indignantly at the prospect of freeing slaves and letting them operate as equals. These protests died down quickly when the general level of ability among the Africans outstripped that of most of the other operative.” I hate this stuff. This stuff makes my blood boil.

Still, The Rook is a fantastic novel. I love the new Myfanwy Thomas. And Chapter 36, one of the original Myfanwy’s letters, is one of the best chapters I have ever read. That chapter is…everything. It is the original Myfanwy’s unintentional treatise on life, death, family, loyalty, duty, responsibility, and, most importantly, her place in the world. No matter how many times I reread this book, I will probably read Chapter 36 a few hundred times throughout the rest of my life. It’s that good. And so is this novel.

A-