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A review by bergsteiger
Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson
4.0
This one is hard for me to rate. I love the world building here. I love the different races and the political and cultural backgrounds. Some of the characters are pretty good too...but there are 84 Dramatis Personae. Which brings me to the things I didn't like about the book.
This tale hops all over the place. In one chapter it can switch perspectives a half a dozen times or more and they aren't connected beyond being characters that exist in the world that Mr. Erickson has created. I don't mind multiple threads and having to figure out roles and plots on my own as the reader, but this almost came across as a parody of parallel narratives.
And as some people mentioned there are a lot of rambling philosophical points. Some of these worked for me and others didn't. The worst though were the rambling internal monologues, that were thankfully designated by italics, which I then used as my cue to skip to the end of said rambling monologue. Sanderson's Light of Archive books are long, but I don't skim/skip sections, so it says something that I wasn't willing to spend the time on these.
Why 4 stars then? I believed in this story and the events unfolding. I mean this was a well crafted tale inside a well crafted world. If you could get over the ADD manner of presentation, this was top notch. I feel like a heavy handed editor would have been useful in this case: "Look Steve, I need you to make 3 parallel threads instead of 84 and cut out the rambling monologues". At any rate, it is a well wrought alternate world, a la Frank Herbert, and while it might be closer to 3.5 stars I do want to give this tale its due.
Will I continue on with the next 30 books though...probably not.
This tale hops all over the place. In one chapter it can switch perspectives a half a dozen times or more and they aren't connected beyond being characters that exist in the world that Mr. Erickson has created. I don't mind multiple threads and having to figure out roles and plots on my own as the reader, but this almost came across as a parody of parallel narratives.
And as some people mentioned there are a lot of rambling philosophical points. Some of these worked for me and others didn't. The worst though were the rambling internal monologues, that were thankfully designated by italics, which I then used as my cue to skip to the end of said rambling monologue. Sanderson's Light of Archive books are long, but I don't skim/skip sections, so it says something that I wasn't willing to spend the time on these.
Why 4 stars then? I believed in this story and the events unfolding. I mean this was a well crafted tale inside a well crafted world. If you could get over the ADD manner of presentation, this was top notch. I feel like a heavy handed editor would have been useful in this case: "Look Steve, I need you to make 3 parallel threads instead of 84 and cut out the rambling monologues". At any rate, it is a well wrought alternate world, a la Frank Herbert, and while it might be closer to 3.5 stars I do want to give this tale its due.
Will I continue on with the next 30 books though...probably not.