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secre 's review for:
The Book of Deacon
by Joseph R. Lallo
This is what I'd call a 'middle of the road' book, otherwise known as a 'three-starrer' or a bang in the middle book. The plot line is very high fantasy esque with all of the cliches that come along with that; schools of magic, various well known creatures and a heroine thrown in at the deep end with a magic sword thrown in for good measure along with a couple of legends.
However, that said, it is an interesting read and kept me engaged to the end although often I wondered why when I was pretty certain what was going to happen. And that is perhaps the crux of the matter; had it been a little less predictable, with a main character who wasn't obviously going to succeed at everything she set her mind to, it would have been more thrilling and far more interesting. As it was, by half way through I didn't care what scrapes our heroine got into because she was always going to escape with little more than scrapes and bruises and perhaps fainting weakly, because that's what girls do. The author is good at throwing hell at his characters, however our heroine is virtually too perfect to be believed and is awesome, obviously. Mary Sue is perhaps a realistic description here.
I did enjoy the portrayal of Leo, half-fox-human beast thing, as a very sketchy character whom you are never quite certain of motives for. The dragons are extremely cool characters as well with a clever moving of intellect and animalistic behaviour. Likewise some of the minor characters we come across spring off the page, regardless of cliche, and it shows the author has skill in creating 3D characters... he just seems to have let it slide with his heroine in favour of her being generally brilliant and yet at the same time child like and naive. She interferes with any grey spectrum of morality issue by being childishly black and white, but despite all she's come through she doesn't gain an understanding of the varied shades of grey. She's instead brilliant yet whiny, child-like yet battle ready and doesn't seem to grow up. That is a combination of attributes likely to get my back up any day of the week.
The other issue with the book is the writing style. It's not bad as such but it's not brilliant either. It's very 'he said', 'he said', 'this happens', 'that happens' and seems to be missing any emotive link or exceptional writing skill. It's readable, don't get me wrong, but the slightly stilted nature pulled me out of the story more times than I could count which is a definite negative. Perhaps it doesn't help that I couldn't empathise with the main character, but there also wasn't a lot there to empathise with.
So essentially, three stars for keeping me engaged to the end but not thrilling me and certainly not wowing me. Will I read the next in the series? Yeah, why not. If I didn't already own it I wouldn't seek it out though.
However, that said, it is an interesting read and kept me engaged to the end although often I wondered why when I was pretty certain what was going to happen. And that is perhaps the crux of the matter; had it been a little less predictable, with a main character who wasn't obviously going to succeed at everything she set her mind to, it would have been more thrilling and far more interesting. As it was, by half way through I didn't care what scrapes our heroine got into because she was always going to escape with little more than scrapes and bruises and perhaps fainting weakly, because that's what girls do. The author is good at throwing hell at his characters, however our heroine is virtually too perfect to be believed and is awesome, obviously. Mary Sue is perhaps a realistic description here.
I did enjoy the portrayal of Leo, half-fox-human beast thing, as a very sketchy character whom you are never quite certain of motives for. The dragons are extremely cool characters as well with a clever moving of intellect and animalistic behaviour. Likewise some of the minor characters we come across spring off the page, regardless of cliche, and it shows the author has skill in creating 3D characters... he just seems to have let it slide with his heroine in favour of her being generally brilliant and yet at the same time child like and naive. She interferes with any grey spectrum of morality issue by being childishly black and white, but despite all she's come through she doesn't gain an understanding of the varied shades of grey. She's instead brilliant yet whiny, child-like yet battle ready and doesn't seem to grow up. That is a combination of attributes likely to get my back up any day of the week.
The other issue with the book is the writing style. It's not bad as such but it's not brilliant either. It's very 'he said', 'he said', 'this happens', 'that happens' and seems to be missing any emotive link or exceptional writing skill. It's readable, don't get me wrong, but the slightly stilted nature pulled me out of the story more times than I could count which is a definite negative. Perhaps it doesn't help that I couldn't empathise with the main character, but there also wasn't a lot there to empathise with.
So essentially, three stars for keeping me engaged to the end but not thrilling me and certainly not wowing me. Will I read the next in the series? Yeah, why not. If I didn't already own it I wouldn't seek it out though.