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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Whoa, I finished!! 

This was a feat, and a journey that I'm glad I finally started. Classic fantasy at its best, truly this was a wonderful read. But boy oh boy is this world slow and a bit dense. That doesn't bother me per se, but for a lot of readers the length and drawn out movement of the plot will be a hurdle they fail to clear. 

I enjoyed our MC, a young boy with dead parents, who was raised in the kitchens of the castle always underfoot. He finds himself taken under the wing of a mysterious elder within the castle who teaches him history, and some other life lessons. Those lessons are short lived (I mean come on you see where this is going) as our MC finds himself in the center of a larger political and magical plot. 

The side characters were great, I enjoyed them a ton, the politics are intense at times. Lots of names, lots of places, lots of history but it all comes together really nicely. The writing is fabulous, even though this book is objectively SLOW I was always into it and wanting to read more. I will continue in this world, I just need a few buffer books to balance this one out before diving into book 2 hahaha 



adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

abe7peaks's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 15%

Read about 100 pages and nothing really happened. Main character of Simon wasn’t interesting either. 
adventurous slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No


I read on goodreads that people said this was a “Slow burn" but at times this was a slow crawl down a very long road, in the dark, with nothing to guide you out of the swamp you've ended up wading in.

This book took me, what felt like approximately 74 years to finish, it just goes on and on and on.

If you’re after fast-paced action, look elsewhere. If you enjoy encyclopedic lore dumps and a protagonist who spends most of the plot confused and bumping into the storyline, welcome aboard.

Simon, our so-called hero, is... there. He’s present. A thoroughly beige main character. Hard to care much about him, though I will grudgingly admit that one line in chapter 42 genuinely made me laugh out loud (you’ll know it when get there,  pure gold amidst the porridge).

That said, I do have to hand it to Tad Williams, the worldbuilding is dense. And by the end, you realise that the slow, lore-heavy groundwork actually does pay off in some satisfying ways. There’s a sense of grandeur you only get from epic fantasy that takes its sweet time.

However. The dreams. Oh god, the dreams. I lost count of how many times Simon conveniently “had a vision” to push the plot forward. 

A respectable epic, but one that demands patience, caffeine, and a group of fellow buddy readers. I liked it enough to keep going with the series… eventually.





3.5 /5

Really enjoyed the story so far... but the pace !!!!
Very little happens (Action Wise) until about 90%.
The Book is almost purely setting up for the next books in the series I presume.
The book is VERY heavy on cast and they are introduced endlessly.

All in all a solid book.

p.s. You can really see the influence it has had for Game of Thrones. Sometimes it is shockingly obvious which parts GOT has used.

denisemadeline's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 70%

I tried. I made it about 400 pages, but I just could not care what happened to any of the characters.  I only kept it up so long because this book was a gift and some of the endorsements on the back were impressive.  But I quit.