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duffypratt 's review for:
Shadow of a Dark Queen
by Raymond E. Feist
Feist does The Dirty Dozen. A group of condemned prisoners embark on a suicide mission to aid their country. Will they succeed? Will any survive? Well, this is Feist, so you know from the outset that the major players will all survive, but that some likable secondary characters have been outfitted with the red shirt of death.
The set-up, and the carrying out of the training and then the plan, are all done well here. The characters are likable, and a few of them are even interesting. Nakor, the master magician who does not believe in magic, plays a major role, and he is always fun, even if his bag of endless oranges can get old.
The basic idea is that the group needs to infiltrate the enemy, learn what lies at the heart of a growing threat, and then somehow escape to get word back to the powers that be. In some ways, all of that ends up being too easy, except for the escape part, which manages to be harrowing.
The main power that am here, is Pug. And this becomes a basic flaw. Feist seems always to be tempted by doing a Pug ex Machina, and without revealing the details, that is something of a problem here too. Worse, the crew go to all these lengths to gather intelligence for Pug when it seems abundantly clear that Pug doesn't need them, and he has better ways to get the same information. That would be OK, if there was some sort of irony to it, but I'm not even sure that Feist understands the difficulty.
Even with those criticisms, I found this to be a competent and mostly enjoyable fantasy. It's thoroughly mainstream and lacks surprises, but its a pleasant read, and I am already half way through the next book (which I am liking more).
The set-up, and the carrying out of the training and then the plan, are all done well here. The characters are likable, and a few of them are even interesting. Nakor, the master magician who does not believe in magic, plays a major role, and he is always fun, even if his bag of endless oranges can get old.
The basic idea is that the group needs to infiltrate the enemy, learn what lies at the heart of a growing threat, and then somehow escape to get word back to the powers that be. In some ways, all of that ends up being too easy, except for the escape part, which manages to be harrowing.
The main power that am here, is Pug. And this becomes a basic flaw. Feist seems always to be tempted by doing a Pug ex Machina, and without revealing the details, that is something of a problem here too. Worse, the crew go to all these lengths to gather intelligence for Pug when it seems abundantly clear that Pug doesn't need them, and he has better ways to get the same information. That would be OK, if there was some sort of irony to it, but I'm not even sure that Feist understands the difficulty.
Even with those criticisms, I found this to be a competent and mostly enjoyable fantasy. It's thoroughly mainstream and lacks surprises, but its a pleasant read, and I am already half way through the next book (which I am liking more).