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joeri81's review
3.0
I finally finished the "Long Price Quartet". I read the series in two omnibus editions and it took me a lot longer than I thought it would. It's not that I didn't like the books, they have a lot of qualities, but I wasn't really drawn to them. Especially the story lacked in parts to fully interest me. Luckily this improved with the second omnibus. See below a full review for each of the two books included in it.
An Autumn War:
This is definitely the best of the four, mainly because it is the most exciting of the bunch. The writting is great in all four books, it has amazing characters that are nicely developed (one of the main strenghts of the books), but overall the books lack in excitement and tension. The third book is the one least suffering from it.
It also has the biggest scope of the four books. It introduces the Galt as an actual threat while the Galt were mostly mentioned in scheming against the Khaiem in the previous two books. With General Gice we also have a Galt as a POV for the first time in the series. He is set on destroying the poets and their andats and has the perfect plan to accomplish this. What we get is war and destruction against the Khaiem. The story unfolds in Machi with an amazing and unexpected twist!
Rating: 7.8/10
The Price Of Spring
Overall a good book and a nice conclusion for the series.
The problem is that it centers mainly around one plot in the story. There are several other story lines (pending war in Chaburi-Tan with pirates, conspiracy against Otah in Tan-Sadar, ...), but these aren't really investigated. The story would have profited massively from it if a couple more POV's had been added. This way these POV's could have followed up on these story lines. There were possibilities for this but these were not taken. This means we are left with 2 POV's, Otah en Maati, and a story that is focusing on their challanges and their internal conflicts and thoughts. In this final book these challenges are especially linked to the consequences of the previous book. The people in Galt and the Khaiem are facing an aging population which makes them easy targets for foreign threats. Both Otah and Maati try to rectify the mistakes from the past with their own resources and tackle these issues how they think would be best. This leads however to another more important threat that could mean the end of the whole world ...
I can say once again that the book is amazing at what it does (character development), but overall I still feel it lacks in content/story. The fact that it focuses mainly on one story line makes it a bit one-sided. I'd say this book is about on par with the second book, slightly less probably.
Rating :7.1/10
Conclusion
This omnibus was better than the first one with the third book being the best in the series and the last one providing a satisfying ending.
The series as a whole is good; it has great writing, very good character development, good worldbuilding with innovative magic. It unfortunately lacks a bit in story to keep me interested. I never had issues reading the story but I wasn't much drawn to it either.
As an overall rating I would give the series 7.2/10
An Autumn War:
This is definitely the best of the four, mainly because it is the most exciting of the bunch. The writting is great in all four books, it has amazing characters that are nicely developed (one of the main strenghts of the books), but overall the books lack in excitement and tension. The third book is the one least suffering from it.
It also has the biggest scope of the four books. It introduces the Galt as an actual threat while the Galt were mostly mentioned in scheming against the Khaiem in the previous two books. With General Gice we also have a Galt as a POV for the first time in the series. He is set on destroying the poets and their andats and has the perfect plan to accomplish this. What we get is war and destruction against the Khaiem. The story unfolds in Machi with an amazing and unexpected twist!
Rating: 7.8/10
The Price Of Spring
Overall a good book and a nice conclusion for the series.
The problem is that it centers mainly around one plot in the story. There are several other story lines (pending war in Chaburi-Tan with pirates, conspiracy against Otah in Tan-Sadar, ...), but these aren't really investigated. The story would have profited massively from it if a couple more POV's had been added. This way these POV's could have followed up on these story lines. There were possibilities for this but these were not taken. This means we are left with 2 POV's, Otah en Maati, and a story that is focusing on their challanges and their internal conflicts and thoughts. In this final book these challenges are especially linked to the consequences of the previous book. The people in Galt and the Khaiem are facing an aging population which makes them easy targets for foreign threats. Both Otah and Maati try to rectify the mistakes from the past with their own resources and tackle these issues how they think would be best. This leads however to another more important threat that could mean the end of the whole world ...
I can say once again that the book is amazing at what it does (character development), but overall I still feel it lacks in content/story. The fact that it focuses mainly on one story line makes it a bit one-sided. I'd say this book is about on par with the second book, slightly less probably.
Rating :7.1/10
Conclusion
This omnibus was better than the first one with the third book being the best in the series and the last one providing a satisfying ending.
The series as a whole is good; it has great writing, very good character development, good worldbuilding with innovative magic. It unfortunately lacks a bit in story to keep me interested. I never had issues reading the story but I wasn't much drawn to it either.
As an overall rating I would give the series 7.2/10
jhouses's review
4.0
Gran continuación de la Tetralogía del Largo Precio. "Fantasía para adultos" dice Jo Walton en su blog, y no se me ocurre mejor definición. En estas cuatro novelas los personajes viven, maduran y envejecen mientras a su alrededor el mundo cambia. La historia es intima y familiar pero tambien épica en la escala de la Alta Fantasía. Pero sin duda, ademas de abandonar los caminos trillados de la Fantasía medieval y los hechiceros de barba blanca, lo que caracteriza estas novelas es la profunda humanidad de los adversarios: Balasar Gize no es un malvado conquistador, es un hombre con una misión autoimpuesta cuyo valor moral rivaliza si no supera al de los heroes. Vanjit es mas víctima de las circunstancias que una oponente. Muy Recomendable.
wwfeldman's review
4.0
I really enjoyed this series, it's not your usual sword slinging fantasy. An original magic system, great character depth, nice plot twists and turns. I thought the series was well thought out and very well written. One of my favorite fantasy series I read last year.
megandawn's review
3.0
(Re-posted from http://theturnedbrain.blogspot.com)
There was this fantasy series I loved like a mad thing when I was about fourteen or so, but I won’t say which one as I don’t want to spoil anyone. There was one character in particular I was very fond of, a dashing young prince. The trilogy, among other things, followed Prince Dashing on various adventures until he saves the land and his lady love and lives happily every after.
But the author did not stop with just this trilogy, he went on to write many (many, many) more set in the same universe, one of which was set seventy or so years after the original trilogy. This new trilogy opens with a courier announcing to a country town that the Prince from the first trilogy had died. At 80. By falling off his horse. Over ten years later and I still remember the specific details.
When you think about it, dying of natural-ish causes at 80 is pretty much the most anyone can ask for. And yet, I was gutted. It took me a long time to bring myself to return to the new trilogy, and I never was able to enjoy it fully. It was just too sad, seeing the characters I had loved so much become old and weak. In my mind Price Dashing had exsisted in his prime, but now that memory was replaced by 80 year old dead Prince Dashing. I just couldn’t shake the feeling of melancholy.
Which brings me to Daniel Abraham’s Long Price quartet. I've seen a lot of words getting used to describe these books: Underrated, amazing, masterpiece. And I’m not suggesting that those words aren’t apt, because they are, but for me only one descriptor truly applies; melancholy. Because like mystery author of my youth, Danial Abraham also employs the big jump forward. An average of fifteen years passes between each of the Long Price’s four volumes, so the characters we are introduced to as teenagers in volume one are nearing the ends of their lives by the last.
I mean, yes, these books are amazing. The world building is nothing short of stunning, and the prose is just beautiful. More than once I was stopped in my tracks by the sheer elegance of a metaphor or line of description. But it’s just so sad, watching the characters grow old.
Watching how time ravages not only their bodies but also their relationships with each other. Sad, but also pretty damn impressive. I myself have little experience with growing old, but it feels like Abraham nailed it perfectly. Writing from the point of view of a much older character isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it carries more gravitas in the Long Price. The older character watching the younger character making the same mistakes they did carries more weight somehow when you were in that characters head while the made the mistakes. I don't think I really understood the folly of youth v. the wisdom of age before.
It might be easy to think, with all this talk of aging, that the books lack excitement, (which is exactly what I would have thought, if I’d known about the time jumps before hand). But it’s not the case! Set aside the fact that Abraham's skill grows viably with each book, and so to does our bond with the characters strengthen, the plot of each book just gets more and more thrilling. The stakes are upped in each volume, so where the first books deals primarily with the relationships between the characters, by the fourth volume empires are crumbling. The third volume, An Autumn War, was my personal favourite of the bunch and an excellent example of how to build suspense, and how to build it damn well.
Overall, these books are bittersweet. It’s a unique experience to stick with characters well into old age, (at least in this genre), and watching them age is very sad. But then we also see the birth of new characters, and new hope, which balances out that sadness out. Kind of like real life, I guess.
So, is the Long Prince quartet an easy read? Not even a little bit. But you’d be mad to pass over it.
There was this fantasy series I loved like a mad thing when I was about fourteen or so, but I won’t say which one as I don’t want to spoil anyone. There was one character in particular I was very fond of, a dashing young prince. The trilogy, among other things, followed Prince Dashing on various adventures until he saves the land and his lady love and lives happily every after.
But the author did not stop with just this trilogy, he went on to write many (many, many) more set in the same universe, one of which was set seventy or so years after the original trilogy. This new trilogy opens with a courier announcing to a country town that the Prince from the first trilogy had died. At 80. By falling off his horse. Over ten years later and I still remember the specific details.
When you think about it, dying of natural-ish causes at 80 is pretty much the most anyone can ask for. And yet, I was gutted. It took me a long time to bring myself to return to the new trilogy, and I never was able to enjoy it fully. It was just too sad, seeing the characters I had loved so much become old and weak. In my mind Price Dashing had exsisted in his prime, but now that memory was replaced by 80 year old dead Prince Dashing. I just couldn’t shake the feeling of melancholy.
Which brings me to Daniel Abraham’s Long Price quartet. I've seen a lot of words getting used to describe these books: Underrated, amazing, masterpiece. And I’m not suggesting that those words aren’t apt, because they are, but for me only one descriptor truly applies; melancholy. Because like mystery author of my youth, Danial Abraham also employs the big jump forward. An average of fifteen years passes between each of the Long Price’s four volumes, so the characters we are introduced to as teenagers in volume one are nearing the ends of their lives by the last.
I mean, yes, these books are amazing. The world building is nothing short of stunning, and the prose is just beautiful. More than once I was stopped in my tracks by the sheer elegance of a metaphor or line of description. But it’s just so sad, watching the characters grow old.
Watching how time ravages not only their bodies but also their relationships with each other. Sad, but also pretty damn impressive. I myself have little experience with growing old, but it feels like Abraham nailed it perfectly. Writing from the point of view of a much older character isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it carries more gravitas in the Long Price. The older character watching the younger character making the same mistakes they did carries more weight somehow when you were in that characters head while the made the mistakes. I don't think I really understood the folly of youth v. the wisdom of age before.
It might be easy to think, with all this talk of aging, that the books lack excitement, (which is exactly what I would have thought, if I’d known about the time jumps before hand). But it’s not the case! Set aside the fact that Abraham's skill grows viably with each book, and so to does our bond with the characters strengthen, the plot of each book just gets more and more thrilling. The stakes are upped in each volume, so where the first books deals primarily with the relationships between the characters, by the fourth volume empires are crumbling. The third volume, An Autumn War, was my personal favourite of the bunch and an excellent example of how to build suspense, and how to build it damn well.
Overall, these books are bittersweet. It’s a unique experience to stick with characters well into old age, (at least in this genre), and watching them age is very sad. But then we also see the birth of new characters, and new hope, which balances out that sadness out. Kind of like real life, I guess.
So, is the Long Prince quartet an easy read? Not even a little bit. But you’d be mad to pass over it.
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