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A review by couldbestephen
Conquest of Fire by James W. Berg
1.0
It's almost impressive how little the writing improved from "The Magestics" to "Conquest of Fire." I think what bothers the most about Berg's writing (beyond the constant typos, grammatical errors, bad dialogue, and inappropriate tags) is how little trust he seems to place in his readers. We are constantly reintroduced to characters we've met; we're given full names, powers, and their relationship to the plot constantly. Maybe it's for the best, none of the characters really have personalities and I couldn't keep anyone straight. They were just names on the page.
There were too many characters in this book. Trying to keep track of all the Magestics and their powers, the wielders of the Artifacts and their powers, and all the other people surrounding those people was bewildering. I kept forgetting people existed until they just randomly started talking and I was reminded, oh yeah, you're still here. The characters rarely felt truly in danger until the last confrontation, there was always someone who would step in at the last second to aid them. Every. Single. Time.
Speaking of the last confrontation... it basically negated all the work done to build up the Artifacts. We thought they needed all of them to bring back Drol Greb, but turns out they didn't! So why spend so much time chasing them and sending assassins and... Honestly, a lot of retconning happened in this book. What little decent world-building we get is constantly undermined by the author himself, most notably the "magic alarms." Those are basically pointless now. The rules on what triggers them keep changing. The naming conventions for the different races has changed from the last book and makes even less sense, particularly for the merfolk.
Spoilers, but Lija, who I think is still 16(!!) is pregnant. Another queer character burns to death. Another painful, amateurish read.
There were too many characters in this book. Trying to keep track of all the Magestics and their powers, the wielders of the Artifacts and their powers, and all the other people surrounding those people was bewildering. I kept forgetting people existed until they just randomly started talking and I was reminded, oh yeah, you're still here. The characters rarely felt truly in danger until the last confrontation, there was always someone who would step in at the last second to aid them. Every. Single. Time.
Speaking of the last confrontation... it basically negated all the work done to build up the Artifacts. We thought they needed all of them to bring back Drol Greb, but turns out they didn't! So why spend so much time chasing them and sending assassins and... Honestly, a lot of retconning happened in this book. What little decent world-building we get is constantly undermined by the author himself, most notably the "magic alarms." Those are basically pointless now. The rules on what triggers them keep changing. The naming conventions for the different races has changed from the last book and makes even less sense, particularly for the merfolk.
Spoilers, but Lija, who I think is still 16(!!) is pregnant. Another queer character burns to death. Another painful, amateurish read.