Reviews

The Naming: The First Book of Pellinor by Alison Croggon

sirensaria's review against another edition

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2.0

I thought this book was going to be REALLY good. It has its own culture, religion (if it can really be called that), area, etc. Unfortunately, for as big as the book is, you don't learn a whole lot about anything. I still don't understand half of what's going on AFTER I read the book.

I have to say that the characters fell rather flat. The characters have no personality, very little emotions, and are just... There. I found it really hard to care about what happened to them. There wasn't a single character that stuck out, that interested me at all, or made me feel anything. They literally were all just there, in the book.

The story line, I have to say, was rather poorly done. It was very basic and had no real detail. It was a compilation of literally what happened to a couple people in a made up area. The story line was this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, etc. It almost felt like a outline of the story and not the actual story itself. On top of everything, there wasn't a whole lot of explanations on why certain things happened, laws, rules, nothing like that. I was rather confused through most of the story. There was WAY too much explaining on how things LOOKED, like how the tree looked, what the river sounded like, things that didn't mean a damn thing to the story. The author took three paragraphs, it seemed, to describe how the sky looked, when saying it was a clear blue sky would have been a lot better and a LOT less boring. I honestly feel like the book was SO long because of all the stupid descriptions that seemed to take up half of the book.

The book was EXTREMELY hard to wade through, and frankly, I dreaded reading the book. I only finished it because I hate giving up on finishing a book. It took me a long time to read the book simply because I SERIOUSLY didn't want to read it. This is definitely not a book I would recommend to someone else.

sam_hartwig's review against another edition

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I really wish that I could've loved this one. It was recommended to me by a friend many years ago and I saw the talking book on the shelf at the library and thought 'why not?'.

The narrator was beautiful and the description of the world was beautiful but this book just wasn't for me.

The audiobook has 16 CD's which worked out to be about 20 hours of listening. I got up to CD 10 and decided to stop, the story wasn't interesting me anymore and I found myself continuously daydreaming and missing lots of the story because I wasn't listening.

I love 'Lord of the Rings' and the book seemed to start off like that and I noticed that many aspects reminded me of it too but there wasn't enough action and storyline to keep me engaged.

I would recommend this book for anyone who is a die hard fan of fantasy but doesn't mind their story to be slow. If you are looking for an epic tale you might find it here after reading all the series but for the most part of book one it wasn't epic at all.

goonreads's review against another edition

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I really wanted to love this... but nothing was grabbing me enough to finish. I may pick it back up later. 

paigeturner04's review against another edition

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1.0

DNF 33%

benfrog's review against another edition

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5.0

This is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Just beautiful beautiful language, an absolute pleasure to read the descriptions of the world. There’s something just so cozy about it. Most of the story doesn’t really stand out, it’s pretty generic, but I like it because it doesn’t get in the way of what this book really has to offer. It’s more about the journey.

If anyone knows of fantasy books with this kind of descriptive language, please recommend them to me.

lurker_stalker's review against another edition

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3.0

My son and I both enjoyed this book. It dragged for us through at least the first half but by the end, we were involved and interested and debating on getting the second one.

tckcallahan's review against another edition

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5.0

Love this series. Has been a long time favorite of mine and I thoroughly enjoy rereading it again. As with Maerad and Cadvan. Music will always be my home.

thistledownhair's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.75

cielbear's review against another edition

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2.0

It didnt seem to intrest me at all..kind of bad to say, but I will try to pick it up again later.

fai_aka's review against another edition

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3.0

The first half of the book is quite slow-paced, but then things started to get interesting