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4.5 ⭐️
This book made me cry a total of 3 times. I mean, ugly, sobbing, lump in the throat crying. It was awesome.
The storytelling in this book was superb. The novel spans, but it doesn't feel rushed, it doesn't feel like I was missing any of the action even when it jumped weeks, months, and years into the future, and even as the characters went from tiny children I had to protect with my life, to young adults that I also had to protect with my life, I was aligned with them the whole way. Feist made complicated, diverse, morally grey characters that I love to see, and I'm honestly heartbroken that the novel is over and I had to say goodbye (until I buy and read the third and fourth ones, and THEN what am I meant to do???). While encompassing such a huge expanse of time and place, he put an immense amount of detail into carving out the characters, in dialogue and action. This book was so well crafted I'm in awe. Everything in this book happens for a reason, and some event's importance isn't revealed until much later when it hits you in the guts and you think oh my god, it finally makes sense!
This book is very political and wargame heavy, but Feist writes it in such a way as it is clear and concise, and doesn't dry out the story. I found it easy to follow, but it doesn't sacrifice complex political organisations and war strategies. He just writes it in such a way as it is mapped out easily and quickly.
But, hidden amongst all the GREATness, was something that just irked me to no end. This book would have been a 5/5, but the raging feminist inside me just wouldn't let me do it. While all the male characters were so well crafted, well rounded, layered and complex, with warring emotions and morally grey alignments... the female characters had the personalities of wet lettuce, at best. Somehow, Feist fell short in creating female characters with the same density of his male characters and left them feeling hazy and transparent, with no clear motives or desires. All the women just seemed like an accessory that the men could wear and talk to all their friends about. And this pained me because I actually LIKED the female characters... I just wish there was MORE to them, to the same extent as their male counterparts.
And there is not one instance that a female character is present in which she does not CRY! I noticed this after probably the third time it happened, and then it KEPT HAPPENING! Bar one or two whole times in the novel, every time a female character is shown, she sheds tears for one reason or another. This especially irked me with It's not that they are showing emotion that bothers me, it's that they were written to different to the men and that their emotions are not parallel to the male's emotions throughout the novel. If they were showing so much emotion, I want the men to show that emotion too.
DON'T GET ME WRONG! I absolutely loved this book, and it really deserves 5/5 stars, I just couldn't bring myself to give it a perfect rating when women were sidelined and undermined under the guise of creating "complex characters". In saying that, even as the raging feminist I am, I absolutely adored this book, and I don't think it's downfalls are to such an extent that it shouldn't be read. It is an epic, epic fantasy, and I would read it again in a heartbeat.
This book made me cry a total of 3 times. I mean, ugly, sobbing, lump in the throat crying. It was awesome.
The storytelling in this book was superb. The novel spans
Spoiler
over 10 years and two realmsThis book is very political and wargame heavy, but Feist writes it in such a way as it is clear and concise, and doesn't dry out the story. I found it easy to follow, but it doesn't sacrifice complex political organisations and war strategies. He just writes it in such a way as it is mapped out easily and quickly.
But, hidden amongst all the GREATness, was something that just irked me to no end. This book would have been a 5/5, but the raging feminist inside me just wouldn't let me do it. While all the male characters were so well crafted, well rounded, layered and complex, with warring emotions and morally grey alignments... the female characters had the personalities of wet lettuce, at best. Somehow, Feist fell short in creating female characters with the same density of his male characters and left them feeling hazy and transparent, with no clear motives or desires. All the women just seemed like an accessory that the men could wear and talk to all their friends about. And this pained me because I actually LIKED the female characters... I just wish there was MORE to them, to the same extent as their male counterparts.
And there is not one instance that a female character is present in which she does not CRY! I noticed this after probably the third time it happened, and then it KEPT HAPPENING! Bar one or two whole times in the novel, every time a female character is shown, she sheds tears for one reason or another. This especially irked me with
Spoiler
the elf queen: the strong, independent, leader that she was, was shedding tears at crucial times, and letting her young lover take the reigns because she was just too fraught with emotion??DON'T GET ME WRONG! I absolutely loved this book, and it really deserves 5/5 stars, I just couldn't bring myself to give it a perfect rating when women were sidelined and undermined under the guise of creating "complex characters". In saying that, even as the raging feminist I am, I absolutely adored this book, and I don't think it's downfalls are to such an extent that it shouldn't be read. It is an epic, epic fantasy, and I would read it again in a heartbeat.