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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
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:
Yes
adventurous
slow-paced
3.75 stars
The plot was great. The characters were too black and white for my personal taste. The first hundred pages I noticed something was bothering me and I just couldn’t figure it out. When I finally did it was a lightbulb moment. The characters too easily convince each other of their arguments. They apologize too quickly. There are no bullies. There are good guys and bad guys. Good guys are always good and bad guys are always bad. Then half way through the story you find out that not all of the bad guys are actually bad. In fact there are a bunch of good guys mixed in there. Again they are clearly always good. There aren’t really any gray areas for anyone. There is really only one grey character in the whole story but you find out that he was actually not at the end.
I say all of that to say that I enjoyed the story. I just wish the characters had been a little more complex. A little more human.
The plot was great. The characters were too black and white for my personal taste. The first hundred pages I noticed something was bothering me and I just couldn’t figure it out. When I finally did it was a lightbulb moment. The characters too easily convince each other of their arguments. They apologize too quickly. There are no bullies. There are good guys and bad guys. Good guys are always good and bad guys are always bad. Then half way through the story you find out that not all of the bad guys are actually bad. In fact there are a bunch of good guys mixed in there. Again they are clearly always good. There aren’t really any gray areas for anyone. There is really only one grey character in the whole story but you find out that he was actually not at the end.
I say all of that to say that I enjoyed the story. I just wish the characters had been a little more complex. A little more human.
The first book in an incredible journey, read them all!
36h of my life that I'll never get back, but I'm finally done with this book...
I picked up the Audible version, with an average voice actor and regular glitches in the recording, background noise, etc. It was not enjoyable, and I would not recommend it. The voice acting is not always coherent, with characters' voices changing every now and then, which makes it hard to remember who's talking. The women's voices were appalling.
As for the story itself, I'm not even sure where to start...
The characters are all bland. They're all perfectly nice, none of them have real flaws, they're so one-dimensional it's very difficult to empathise or connect with them. Whether they're kids or kings, they all seem to be perfectly well-balanced and never get angry or hold grudges for long. When they fight, one of them will simply just laugh it off and everyone will apologise for being silly. As if it was that simple. They don't grow or evolve on their own, and whatever little changes might happen to them is often reversed or just improve upon.
The men are all hardy and brave and fearless, the women all passive and submissive, with just enough feistiness to keep the men entertained. They're also pretty dumb and clearly just a reflection of what the author wish a companion would be: stupider than them, at their beck and call and in awe of whatever they do. The most interesting characters are quickly forgotten or relegated to the background, and we're just left with that same string of boring goody-two-shoes off to save the realm.
The world-building is poor and incoherent at times. The kingdom seems to be an incredibly vast expanse of land with about one and a half bordering nation that may or may not be hostile but never intervene or wage war. However, contained within that kingdom, you also have different races that miraculously live in perfect harmony and happily tag along on adventures and provide help as if the colonisation or their land was perfectly fine. The efforts made to build a different world are even poorer. A token weird plant or animal here and there, some nonsensical hierarchical and governmental divisions that make no sense and are for the most part based on honour and tradition (wtf), people in power who realise how useful the protagonist is (of course!) and set them on a better path after messing around for a while.
For a while eh? Well yeah, because the sense of time is also atrocious. Sometimes you'll follow the character over the course of a couple of hours, or day, and suddenly you've jumped ahead a few months or years. And then you'll jump back to where you were. Sometimes a character will be talked about for what you think is a few days or weeks, and turns out to be centuries. Then you jump to another character, a few months ahead of where you were with no coherent link between the two events. It's as if the author had too many characters to bring across the finish line, and was trying really hard to all get them to arrive there at the same time without the reader forgetting any of them, no matter how inconsequential they were (I'm looking at you, Carline).
Ultimately, I can't say I felt there was much point to the plot either. Random invaders arrive, they don't seem to have a reason for that, then there's a massive war that somehow doesn't really do that much damage, then they leave at some point because fuck this, it's time to finish the book. There is no arc that is particularly interesting to follow as all of the characters' problems always get solved quickly and efficiently and back to being perfect they go. It's mostly boring, with very few bits worthy or your attention.
Ultimately, this book felt like it was trying too hard to be a "great" epic fantasy in the style of Tolkien, Martin or Rothfuss. It's failed on all accounts. It's a mess that has too many ingredients that are all bland and don't all go well together. I stopped paying attention for minutes at a time every now and then and didn't feel I'd missed anything when I remembered I was listening to an audiobook. Thankfully, Audible refunded me the damn thing. Steer clear and find yourself something more interesting.
I picked up the Audible version, with an average voice actor and regular glitches in the recording, background noise, etc. It was not enjoyable, and I would not recommend it. The voice acting is not always coherent, with characters' voices changing every now and then, which makes it hard to remember who's talking. The women's voices were appalling.
As for the story itself, I'm not even sure where to start...
The characters are all bland. They're all perfectly nice, none of them have real flaws, they're so one-dimensional it's very difficult to empathise or connect with them. Whether they're kids or kings, they all seem to be perfectly well-balanced and never get angry or hold grudges for long. When they fight, one of them will simply just laugh it off and everyone will apologise for being silly. As if it was that simple. They don't grow or evolve on their own, and whatever little changes might happen to them is often reversed or just improve upon.
The men are all hardy and brave and fearless, the women all passive and submissive, with just enough feistiness to keep the men entertained. They're also pretty dumb and clearly just a reflection of what the author wish a companion would be: stupider than them, at their beck and call and in awe of whatever they do. The most interesting characters are quickly forgotten or relegated to the background, and we're just left with that same string of boring goody-two-shoes off to save the realm.
The world-building is poor and incoherent at times. The kingdom seems to be an incredibly vast expanse of land with about one and a half bordering nation that may or may not be hostile but never intervene or wage war. However, contained within that kingdom, you also have different races that miraculously live in perfect harmony and happily tag along on adventures and provide help as if the colonisation or their land was perfectly fine. The efforts made to build a different world are even poorer. A token weird plant or animal here and there, some nonsensical hierarchical and governmental divisions that make no sense and are for the most part based on honour and tradition (wtf), people in power who realise how useful the protagonist is (of course!) and set them on a better path after messing around for a while.
For a while eh? Well yeah, because the sense of time is also atrocious. Sometimes you'll follow the character over the course of a couple of hours, or day, and suddenly you've jumped ahead a few months or years. And then you'll jump back to where you were. Sometimes a character will be talked about for what you think is a few days or weeks, and turns out to be centuries. Then you jump to another character, a few months ahead of where you were with no coherent link between the two events. It's as if the author had too many characters to bring across the finish line, and was trying really hard to all get them to arrive there at the same time without the reader forgetting any of them, no matter how inconsequential they were (I'm looking at you, Carline).
Ultimately, I can't say I felt there was much point to the plot either. Random invaders arrive, they don't seem to have a reason for that, then there's a massive war that somehow doesn't really do that much damage, then they leave at some point because fuck this, it's time to finish the book. There is no arc that is particularly interesting to follow as all of the characters' problems always get solved quickly and efficiently and back to being perfect they go. It's mostly boring, with very few bits worthy or your attention.
Ultimately, this book felt like it was trying too hard to be a "great" epic fantasy in the style of Tolkien, Martin or Rothfuss. It's failed on all accounts. It's a mess that has too many ingredients that are all bland and don't all go well together. I stopped paying attention for minutes at a time every now and then and didn't feel I'd missed anything when I remembered I was listening to an audiobook. Thankfully, Audible refunded me the damn thing. Steer clear and find yourself something more interesting.
A decent first novel. The characters are engaging, and it's fun to see so clearly where the very young Feist drew his inspiration for various scenes. I probably would have finished it, but there is a list of people waiting for this library copy, so I can't renew it. The plot is very martial and all the battle scenes between the interesting bits slowed me down enough that I probably won't check it out again.
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
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:
Yes
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Absolutely brilliant! The characters are vividly painted, the plot is engaging and it was so wonderfully told I felt like I was dropped down into the world of Midkemia along with Pug and Tomas! I can't wait to read the next book, and can see myself working through the entire series of trilogies and quadrilogies set in these worlds!
It was pretty slow. Then there were massive jumps in time which I really didn't like. It was kind of interesting overall. I mean it was alright, but like I'm not super keen to go on to any sequels. I kind of like my medieval books a bit more medieval, my wars a bit less pointless (like a trade would have solved like everyone's issues from the start??!) and my characters lives a bit more distinct. I felt very distanced from them, like you don't really share there lives, you just watch it from afar... It had a happy ending for most of the good characters though - I liked that. Like this book was recommended to me, so someone liked it, but it's just not my style.