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cupiscent's review
Setting aside at page 102, because I'm just not having any fun or feeling any burning need to know more of the story. There are a few ways in which this just isn't working at all for me.
One is the world, which I started out in the prologue thinking might be sort of Egyptian-ish possibly, but quickly and obviously settled into standard western-Euro, complete with Germanic-esque names, jousting, castles and ale and buxom wenches. Duchies, councils, the old superstitions denounced by the new severe religion... yawn.
Secondly, and relatedly, the language usage just wasn't working at all for me. There's a very staged and almost Shakespearean feel to it. (In one exchange, says character a: "Oh ho, so I'm a squire, am I? Come to bend my knee with querulous demand?" to which character b replies: "No, my lord. If there's knee-bending wanted it will be me in the mud, not you." I can just about see the actors delivering it on stage, doublet and hose and all. But it's not really working for me on the page.) There's some interesting slang and other usage, but even then it tends to be overused - the fifth time I've seen one slang term in two pages I'm bored with it already.
It's also just plain long, in ways it really didn't need to be. Characters wrangle over decisions and discussions for whole pages when it could have been made briefer and pithier, and scenes meander, full of colour and detail and character elements that seem of tertiary importance at best. Part of what I enjoy about fantasy is the richness and size of its stories, but there's a difference between an epic story and fantasy flab, and my feeling is that this tends to the latter.
Third, the characters and their stories were none of them interesting to me. Old, steady men and their young hotheaded heirs, selfish dukes and their wracked-by-honour detractors. Selfish, pompous, straightforward, boring men, in conflict with other men, over the fates and honours and whatnot of men. The few women in the first chapters were witches, bitches, ninnies or mentioned but not seen. I don't care about any of the people we've met, I don't care about what they're doing, and I don't care about the repercussions, because this is, or seems most strongly to be, another Game-of-Thrones struggles-of-men-in-the-mud fantasy.
For all of these reasons, I will not be slogging through the remaining 570-odd pages of this.
One is the world, which I started out in the prologue thinking might be sort of Egyptian-ish possibly, but quickly and obviously settled into standard western-Euro, complete with Germanic-esque names, jousting, castles and ale and buxom wenches. Duchies, councils, the old superstitions denounced by the new severe religion... yawn.
Secondly, and relatedly, the language usage just wasn't working at all for me. There's a very staged and almost Shakespearean feel to it. (In one exchange, says character a: "Oh ho, so I'm a squire, am I? Come to bend my knee with querulous demand?" to which character b replies: "No, my lord. If there's knee-bending wanted it will be me in the mud, not you." I can just about see the actors delivering it on stage, doublet and hose and all. But it's not really working for me on the page.) There's some interesting slang and other usage, but even then it tends to be overused - the fifth time I've seen one slang term in two pages I'm bored with it already.
It's also just plain long, in ways it really didn't need to be. Characters wrangle over decisions and discussions for whole pages when it could have been made briefer and pithier, and scenes meander, full of colour and detail and character elements that seem of tertiary importance at best. Part of what I enjoy about fantasy is the richness and size of its stories, but there's a difference between an epic story and fantasy flab, and my feeling is that this tends to the latter.
Third, the characters and their stories were none of them interesting to me. Old, steady men and their young hotheaded heirs, selfish dukes and their wracked-by-honour detractors. Selfish, pompous, straightforward, boring men, in conflict with other men, over the fates and honours and whatnot of men. The few women in the first chapters were witches, bitches, ninnies or mentioned but not seen. I don't care about any of the people we've met, I don't care about what they're doing, and I don't care about the repercussions, because this is, or seems most strongly to be, another Game-of-Thrones struggles-of-men-in-the-mud fantasy.
For all of these reasons, I will not be slogging through the remaining 570-odd pages of this.
thiefofcamorr's review
Katharine is a judge for the Aurealis Awards. This entry is the personal opinion of Katharine herself, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of any judging panel, the judging coordinator or the Aurealis Awards management team.
To be safe, I won't be recording my thoughts (if I choose to) here until after the AA are over.
To be safe, I won't be recording my thoughts (if I choose to) here until after the AA are over.
ekfmef's review
1.0
Ik geef niet vaak halverwege een boek op, maar dit is toch echt om te huilen. Een Song of Ice and Fire wannebe zonder het talent om leuke, relatable personages te maken en de plotlijnen op een goede manier aan elkaar te verbinden. Het resultaat is een boek vol vreselijk misogynistische vloekende hatelijke personages; ik ben normaliter de laatste om te klagen over het patriarchaat en over taalgebruik in boeken, maar het is gewoon een beetje raar als de personages eerst met een aardappel in hun mond hoofse woorden bezigen en dan opeens 'you fucking slut!' gaan roepen. Het krachttermenrepertoire bestaat eigenlijk vooral uit 'bitch' 'slut' en 'fuck'. Het is een beetje het John and Aerin syndroom maar dan met scheldwoorden.
Verder wil ik gewoon helemaal niet weten wat er gebeurt, je wordt op geen moment echt betrokken bij de personages. So what als er oorlog uitbreekt, who cares? Jullie zijn allemaal verwaande nesten. Tevens draait het tot nu toe allemaal om de liefde, ook al zo'n zwaktebod. Normale mensen doen niet alles voor 1 partner, dat is misschien even een fase maar niet dat je je hele leven er door laat beinvloeden, hoop ik...
Wie geinteresseerd is mag het boek van me overnemen, na een paar pagina's weet je het eigenlijk al...
Verder wil ik gewoon helemaal niet weten wat er gebeurt, je wordt op geen moment echt betrokken bij de personages. So what als er oorlog uitbreekt, who cares? Jullie zijn allemaal verwaande nesten. Tevens draait het tot nu toe allemaal om de liefde, ook al zo'n zwaktebod. Normale mensen doen niet alles voor 1 partner, dat is misschien even een fase maar niet dat je je hele leven er door laat beinvloeden, hoop ik...
Wie geinteresseerd is mag het boek van me overnemen, na een paar pagina's weet je het eigenlijk al...
cousinrachel's review
4.0
This resembles A Game of Thrones from the Song of Ice and Fire series in several ways - the medieval setting, grand political conflict, even using George R. R. Martin's phrase "in his cups" to mean drunkenness, unless Martin got that from somewhere else. But it draws characters quite well, not making most of them "good" or "bad," but a combination. Characters evolve over the long span of time, taking a while to show their fundamental nature or motivations; it's often nail-biting to see what choices they will make. Some of them are incredibly stupid and make me want to choke them, but given that real people make incredibly stupid decisions, I don't hold it against the book. I appreciate that the author doesn't make all of them sympathetic or wise, and in fact sometimes made me pity people who also did despicable things, even sympathize with them for doing it. This book is extremely bleak in that well-intentioned people become poisoned by the violence, selfishness, and hierarchical political and social system around them, eventually doing the actions they initially would have condemned. It does have its share of true villainy, though. I want to continue reading the series just to watch a certain person get it. ;)
This author doesn't fool around with long descriptions, unlike Martin or Tolkien. I appreciate world-building, but I want to get to the action, too. This was a major way it didn't lose my interest. At the same time, there are confusing time-jumps, where one chapter suddenly takes place six years after the next and it's difficult to keep up with characters' ages. I might be reading along and it's almost as if Miller mentions offhand, "Oh by the way, six years have passed now, OK back to the action." There isn't much of a natural sense of time passing.
Also unlike Martin, Miller relieves a bit of the darkness with some levity, which I get the sense isn't found in many fantasy series. I hope in the next one she keeps up the humor - wading through so much doom and death gets a bit taxing after a while.
Overall, I quite liked it, although the downhill slide it took in terms of people's moral integrity and any hope for the future was a downer. On the other hand, it was fascinating to read, and it's realistic that life in that setting was grim. Hope Miller brings a bit more encouraging turns of events in the next book to make the payoff worth it.
(By the way, the book description on the site is incorrect: The bastard character's name is Roric, not Ederic.)
This author doesn't fool around with long descriptions, unlike Martin or Tolkien. I appreciate world-building, but I want to get to the action, too. This was a major way it didn't lose my interest. At the same time, there are confusing time-jumps, where one chapter suddenly takes place six years after the next and it's difficult to keep up with characters' ages. I might be reading along and it's almost as if Miller mentions offhand, "Oh by the way, six years have passed now, OK back to the action." There isn't much of a natural sense of time passing.
Also unlike Martin, Miller relieves a bit of the darkness with some levity, which I get the sense isn't found in many fantasy series. I hope in the next one she keeps up the humor - wading through so much doom and death gets a bit taxing after a while.
Overall, I quite liked it, although the downhill slide it took in terms of people's moral integrity and any hope for the future was a downer. On the other hand, it was fascinating to read, and it's realistic that life in that setting was grim. Hope Miller brings a bit more encouraging turns of events in the next book to make the payoff worth it.
(By the way, the book description on the site is incorrect: The bastard character's name is Roric, not Ederic.)
ankh_49's review
4.0
Despite all the characters being terrible people and nothing good happening, I really enjoyed this book.
snd1101's review
4.0
I received this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program in exchange for a review.
This book is a little hard to review because I feel pretty ambivalent about it. On one hand, I really like big, sprawling fantasy novels; I really like lots of world-building and I like getting a feel for the politics of a place that I'm reading about—and I also like getting into the characters' heads for their motivation, which is basically what this book is about.
However, this book is also SLOW, it jumps around with no warning, and isn't exactly ... fun?... to read for more reasons than just that. There's a lot of uncreative swearing (which, okay, it focuses mostly on people who are soldiers, or who are at least living a martial lifestyle, but couldn't they at least swear a little more creatively?), the timeline jumps months or years at a time without any nice little headers saying things like ~Five Years Pass~.
There's also a small issue I have with the chapter breaks—they all end on cliffhangers, which is fine (and the way one ought to construct a chapter), but these cliffhangers are in the middle of a scene and not at what I find is a natural breaking point. Instead, the next chapter picks up with the next sentence of the exchange or the next step in the preceding scene, which just feels clunky to me.
That being said, I did find it engaging enough to finish and at least be remotely intrigued by the characters for 700 pages, and that's saying something. I'm interested enough in the goings-on in this book world that I'd even think about picking up book 2 just to see what happens to our misbegotten heroes. I'm just not champing at the bit to see what happens like I am with some other series out there.
This book is a little hard to review because I feel pretty ambivalent about it. On one hand, I really like big, sprawling fantasy novels; I really like lots of world-building and I like getting a feel for the politics of a place that I'm reading about—and I also like getting into the characters' heads for their motivation, which is basically what this book is about.
However, this book is also SLOW, it jumps around with no warning, and isn't exactly ... fun?... to read for more reasons than just that. There's a lot of uncreative swearing (which, okay, it focuses mostly on people who are soldiers, or who are at least living a martial lifestyle, but couldn't they at least swear a little more creatively?), the timeline jumps months or years at a time without any nice little headers saying things like ~Five Years Pass~.
There's also a small issue I have with the chapter breaks—they all end on cliffhangers, which is fine (and the way one ought to construct a chapter), but these cliffhangers are in the middle of a scene and not at what I find is a natural breaking point. Instead, the next chapter picks up with the next sentence of the exchange or the next step in the preceding scene, which just feels clunky to me.
That being said, I did find it engaging enough to finish and at least be remotely intrigued by the characters for 700 pages, and that's saying something. I'm interested enough in the goings-on in this book world that I'd even think about picking up book 2 just to see what happens to our misbegotten heroes. I'm just not champing at the bit to see what happens like I am with some other series out there.
justini's review against another edition
2.0
I had high hopes for this book, it's in my wheel-house you might say. Unfortunately it felt very much same, same and not at all different from what has come before. Lordly rebellion, bastard takes the throne, heir thought dead but isn't. Big bad shadowy guy in the background pulling strings but not a lot in the way of explanation.
It is a largish book that doesn't really go anywhere. From when we start to when we finish is merely a matter of years and a lot of characters dying, but since I didn't really get attached to them in the beginning it didn't bother me at all. A lot of the time I found the interesting characters didn't have enough to do or say whilst others had whole chapters of nothing interesting, just a lot of talk and what felt like background colour that we didn't really need.
The language interested me for a while, but it wasn't enough to hold my interest. I ended up skimming through the last half, hoping against hope for some big twist. I am not a fan of books that don't give you some kind of pay off for your time, especially when they are this long. Instead we have a world getting darker, our main character is a wet blanket, the women are not given enough to do (which considering this is written by a woman just pisses me off) and the bad guy getting away with everything, cause, you know, magic.
Some characters just did not seem at all real, even fantasy real. Seriously, you aren't sure that your brother is a good guy or a bad guy but you're going to bring your whole family into his court? I know it's fantasy but I find it hard to believe in the 'good' characters complete lack of understanding about the real world they live in. You know you are surrounded by a nest of vipers but hey, you trust them anyway? Grrrrrrrrrrr. Doubt I will read anything more in this series, may give a different series a go but we'll see.
It is a largish book that doesn't really go anywhere. From when we start to when we finish is merely a matter of years and a lot of characters dying, but since I didn't really get attached to them in the beginning it didn't bother me at all. A lot of the time I found the interesting characters didn't have enough to do or say whilst others had whole chapters of nothing interesting, just a lot of talk and what felt like background colour that we didn't really need.
The language interested me for a while, but it wasn't enough to hold my interest. I ended up skimming through the last half, hoping against hope for some big twist. I am not a fan of books that don't give you some kind of pay off for your time, especially when they are this long. Instead we have a world getting darker, our main character is a wet blanket, the women are not given enough to do (which considering this is written by a woman just pisses me off) and the bad guy getting away with everything, cause, you know, magic.
Some characters just did not seem at all real, even fantasy real. Seriously, you aren't sure that your brother is a good guy or a bad guy but you're going to bring your whole family into his court? I know it's fantasy but I find it hard to believe in the 'good' characters complete lack of understanding about the real world they live in. You know you are surrounded by a nest of vipers but hey, you trust them anyway? Grrrrrrrrrrr. Doubt I will read anything more in this series, may give a different series a go but we'll see.
michelle_e_goldsmith's review
3.0
I'm going to hold off rating this book until I have had some more time to decide what I think about it.
It took me a while to get into, but after that it was pretty compelling.
My main issue with the book may mostly be due to personal taste. There were quite a few POV characters throughout the book and I found some of them far more interesting than others. While very few of the characters are paragons of morality, I found the more morally ambiguous ones to be more engaging while some of the other characters (who were possibly supposed to be more likeable?) I just couldn't bring myself to care so much about. For instance, I didn't really care for Roric but found Vidar, Humbert and Lindara well drawn and interesting to read about.
Unfortunately,none of the characters I found most interesting still lived by the end of the book . However, I assume Miller will introduce more characters in the next book that are hopefully equally as well drawn.
This book will probably hit the spot for a fair few 'Song of Ice and Fire' fans and I will definitely look into Miller's other books.
It took me a while to get into, but after that it was pretty compelling.
My main issue with the book may mostly be due to personal taste. There were quite a few POV characters throughout the book and I found some of them far more interesting than others. While very few of the characters are paragons of morality, I found the more morally ambiguous ones to be more engaging while some of the other characters (who were possibly supposed to be more likeable?) I just couldn't bring myself to care so much about. For instance,
Unfortunately,
This book will probably hit the spot for a fair few 'Song of Ice and Fire' fans and I will definitely look into Miller's other books.
smcleish's review
2.0
Disappointing. Lord of the Rings used to be the model for unoriginal fantasy; if Game of Thrones takes over that position, I don't want to know.
alexvb's review
DNF’d at 14%. The prologue was absolutely amazing! I was totally zoned in but then chapter one started with a completely different tone and group of characters so it took me time to get into that. Then, the same thing again, in chapter 2 a completely different tone shift and different characters. So I found myself just not wanting to pick it back up after a short time away from it.