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3.56 AVERAGE
3.56 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
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:
Complicated
A good ending to the duology, this book had similar strength and weakness as in book 1. The pros are clearly Asher and Gar and the general writing of the book. Plot pacing is a little uneven with action too back-ended for it to be particularly exciting. Plus, the villain continued to be particularly egregious is his OTT shenanigans. It was like he had escaped from a soap-opera - not my favourite. Passible but not great.
This book works bests when we are more tightly focused on the characters - which is good for me as I happen to like the two protagonists. This teetered between 3.5 stars and 4 for me but I am rounding up to 4 stars as I kind of loved how irascible Asher was. He is rude, crass, impatient and extremely loyal - I kind of loved that. It isn't a normal hero - or even anti-hero - but I know people like this IRL so it rung very true to me.
A nice little set which is worth checking out IMO. Now only if it hadn't taken me 10 years to get through this.
This book works bests when we are more tightly focused on the characters - which is good for me as I happen to like the two protagonists. This teetered between 3.5 stars and 4 for me but I am rounding up to 4 stars as I kind of loved how irascible Asher was. He is rude, crass, impatient and extremely loyal - I kind of loved that. It isn't a normal hero - or even anti-hero - but I know people like this IRL so it rung very true to me.
A nice little set which is worth checking out IMO. Now only if it hadn't taken me 10 years to get through this.
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A definite improvement over the first book, although at the cost of a few narrative threads and characters that are unceremoniously dropped in the transition. And I still don't understand how Asher earns the love and devotion of so many other characters by scowling bitterly and shouting at them, but that's less bothersome now that he's surrounded by a more compelling plot. Both the court intrigue and the magic are much better handled here, and having clear villains with well-defined aims helps sharpen the story. This is still not my favorite series, and I probably won't read any further in it, but I'm glad that this particular duology came to a satisfying conclusion after such a rocky start.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
slow-paced
As with the first volume of this duology, I felt that this was a book full of interesting ideas that are made to play out in an uninteresting manner. The two peoples who inhabit Miller’s Kingdom of Lur, the Doranen and the Olken, could have been used to say some really interesting things about race and racism; those themes are touched upon, but always skitter away from being the focus in any major way. Instead the focus is mainly that Asher, the protagonist, is awesome. He’s a rough country lad with a rude mouth and a big destiny; I should have liked him, but instead I barely cared—probably because everyone else in the books (besides the obvious baddies, of course) are so frickin’ enamored of him. He rises to the top of Dorana society in a remarkably short time; him gaining magical power then becomes almost irrelevant in the face of the other power he’s racked up. Gar, the magicless Doranen prince, has slightly more interesting angst, but he makes too many stupid decisions for me to care much beyond wanting to give him a smack. Miller gets points for Dathne, who’s the type of cold, calculating female good guy one rarely encounters, but since there’s nothing sympathetic or really all that interesting about her, I ultimately didn’t really care about her either, and her romance with Asher was poorly-developed and likewise pretty dull. For most of both books, not much really happens besides the characters arguing for pages, and the events that did occur—with the exception of Gar being briefly gifted with magic—did not surprise or intrigue me very much at all.
So why did I keep reading, through two lengthy volumes? I can’t really say. I guess Miller did pull off the trick of convincing me that something interesting was just about to happen—but it never really did. The basic plot remained: rough country lad comes to city, befriends prince, discovers destiny, defeats evil, saves kingdom. There are a lot of cool variations on that that have and can still be written—versions with dynamic characters, humor (here, sadly lacking), intrigue (paint-by-numbers), romance (Asher/Gar was better set up than Asher/Dathne), tragedy (didn’t care and still don’t). In my opinion, this just isn’t one of them.
So why did I keep reading, through two lengthy volumes? I can’t really say. I guess Miller did pull off the trick of convincing me that something interesting was just about to happen—but it never really did. The basic plot remained: rough country lad comes to city, befriends prince, discovers destiny, defeats evil, saves kingdom. There are a lot of cool variations on that that have and can still be written—versions with dynamic characters, humor (here, sadly lacking), intrigue (paint-by-numbers), romance (Asher/Gar was better set up than Asher/Dathne), tragedy (didn’t care and still don’t). In my opinion, this just isn’t one of them.
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really liked this book. I feel like it made me remember the first one more fondly. I just really love these characters and I like being around them. I thought the beginning of this book was really funny. Asher went through the entire first book and he is still surprised when he gets promotions. It did slow down a bit towards the middle and Asher ended up taking a backseat in the story for a while, but I liked the way the ending wrapped things up and I was having genuine emotions about it.
This progressed a little slowly for me.. Maybe that had a little to do with the fact that I read half of it, then went on vacation and didn't pick it back up for over a week, and am just now finishing it... But I don't think that was all of it. Book one ended in a huge cliffhanger, and I expected book two to be a nonstop fast paced progression to the conclusion. Instead, not much happened until the last few chapters, the rest was just set up for the final battle. People going here and there, talking and puttering away time. I still really enjoyed it, I just expected more from it.
I did like the ending though, and as a whole, I really enjoyed the duology. I'll be trying out the prequel at some point for sure, and then maybe someday the series that follows this one.
I definitely recommend this duology to any classic epic fantasy fans. It's good old fashioned magic stuffed fantasy done well, which I haven't run into in a long time. 3.5 stars for this one, and over all I'd give the set of two 4.25 stars.
I did like the ending though, and as a whole, I really enjoyed the duology. I'll be trying out the prequel at some point for sure, and then maybe someday the series that follows this one.
I definitely recommend this duology to any classic epic fantasy fans. It's good old fashioned magic stuffed fantasy done well, which I haven't run into in a long time. 3.5 stars for this one, and over all I'd give the set of two 4.25 stars.