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A review by dark_reader
Soldiers of Ice by David Zeb Cook, Fred Fields
3.0
David Cook wrote the excellent [b:Horselords|291736|Horselords (Forgotten Realms Empires, #1)|David Zeb Cook|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328327023s/291736.jpg|283053], also in the Forgotten Realms line of novels, which stood out as suprisingly literate, being more of a fantasy anthropological exploration than a typical adventure story. There are elements of this here too, in the main character's experience with a gnoll tribe that presents them as more than merely half-jackal savages. But, overall this remains a standard adventure tale, although a welcome one.
I started reading it with uncertainty; it begins rather generically, with a young Harper-in-training receiving her first grown-up mission, to seal a rift to the elemental plane of ice by placing pre-magicked stones around it. Martine, the main character, lacks any distinctive personality and mostly fails to develop any later on. She remains a generic good-aligned ranger with wilderness survival skills. I was suprised that she reached the point of accomplishing her primary mission by 100 pages in. After that, though, things get complicated. Spoilers aside, let's just say that she inadvertently sparks a local race war. The plot took unexpected turns and the book as a whole turned out medium-solid.
I must say, though, that I have reservations about this whole Harper framework. As a "semi-secret organization preserving good in the Realms", the Harpers are lame, plain and simple. I strongly suspect that it is a pyramid scheme of some sort. Here, Martine's only motivation for going on this mission is "for her career" with the Harpers. I wonder if they have dental? The best books in this line are the ones that barely tangentially reference the group.
ADDENDUM: I just remembered that I wanted to comment on a couple of physical aspects of the book (original paperback edition). One, the cover art is not terrible, for a change in this line of books at this time period. The cover actually represents characters and a scene from the novel, although the spiky-armor guy should be smaller. It is by an artist who has done other covers in this line, so I think we can attribute this to whomever was responsible for the direction to the artist in this case. I think I will make some sub-folders to sort these books by cover artist, for my own interest.
The other thing to mention, is that this book is shorter than most in the same line. Although they all run approximately 310-300 pages, by adjusting font and page margins they fit a variety of word counts into that number of pages. This felt like 60,000-70,000 words rather than the usual 80,000-90,000 words. This is fine; it was just as long as it needed to be.
I started reading it with uncertainty; it begins rather generically, with a young Harper-in-training receiving her first grown-up mission, to seal a rift to the elemental plane of ice by placing pre-magicked stones around it. Martine, the main character, lacks any distinctive personality and mostly fails to develop any later on. She remains a generic good-aligned ranger with wilderness survival skills. I was suprised that she reached the point of accomplishing her primary mission by 100 pages in. After that, though, things get complicated. Spoilers aside, let's just say that she inadvertently sparks a local race war. The plot took unexpected turns and the book as a whole turned out medium-solid.
I must say, though, that I have reservations about this whole Harper framework. As a "semi-secret organization preserving good in the Realms", the Harpers are lame, plain and simple. I strongly suspect that it is a pyramid scheme of some sort. Here, Martine's only motivation for going on this mission is "for her career" with the Harpers. I wonder if they have dental? The best books in this line are the ones that barely tangentially reference the group.
ADDENDUM: I just remembered that I wanted to comment on a couple of physical aspects of the book (original paperback edition). One, the cover art is not terrible, for a change in this line of books at this time period. The cover actually represents characters and a scene from the novel, although the spiky-armor guy should be smaller. It is by an artist who has done other covers in this line, so I think we can attribute this to whomever was responsible for the direction to the artist in this case. I think I will make some sub-folders to sort these books by cover artist, for my own interest.
The other thing to mention, is that this book is shorter than most in the same line. Although they all run approximately 310-300 pages, by adjusting font and page margins they fit a variety of word counts into that number of pages. This felt like 60,000-70,000 words rather than the usual 80,000-90,000 words. This is fine; it was just as long as it needed to be.