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A review by calamity_mary
The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt
3.0
The Court of Air was highly recommended throughout fantasy forums and it has some awesome reviews, so naturally, when I was offered the opportunity to buy a limited edition with an autograph from the author I jumped at it, even though this awesome limited edition was in Portuguese and I seldom read any English book in my native language, mainly because I end up hating the way it’s translated. In my opinion books should be always read in their original language if possible. But I digress.
First let me start by saying that this book left me with a desire to check out other adventures in this world.
However, the fact is, that it’s way too long and could have enjoyed a bit more editing. It makes use of some preposterous terms and most of them, belonging uniquely to the universe created by the writer, are never ever explained to us and we are left wondering, what the hell he meant by that. Animals, food, professions and objects are just put in the book as if the writer assumes that we all live in the universe he created and therefore know instantly what he means. This ended up making my reading experience less enjoyable since I couldn’t imagine half the things in the book. I just assumed their meaning from the overall sense of the scene.
The way the book wanders trough the plot without a feasible point for most part is also a bit annoying and it takes almost 200 pages for the last stand/fight to unfold. Not to mention that what seems a key character over the first part of the book, suddenly disappears without a single explanation, when one of our heroes gains his powers and then pops back up again to help in the final fight. There are whole pages of pointless scenes, like Damson Davenport and “the ghost in the machine” in the Green Room.
And why is it that the main characters are divided between offensive and defensive but I always saw the offensive as defensive until the end and the defensive was always offensive. Because going half the book gun fighting, chasing and killing villains and then calling it defensive just seems weird.
Other than that, it wasn’t bad. Some very interesting characters were introduced (maybe to many and most of them went away too fast) and even though the universe needs a bit more explaining, at least it seems like a very interesting one. Having high hopes these flaws are corrected in the next volumes, I intend to pick up at least one more book in the series whenever my TBR pile gets a bit smaller.
First let me start by saying that this book left me with a desire to check out other adventures in this world.
However, the fact is, that it’s way too long and could have enjoyed a bit more editing. It makes use of some preposterous terms and most of them, belonging uniquely to the universe created by the writer, are never ever explained to us and we are left wondering, what the hell he meant by that. Animals, food, professions and objects are just put in the book as if the writer assumes that we all live in the universe he created and therefore know instantly what he means. This ended up making my reading experience less enjoyable since I couldn’t imagine half the things in the book. I just assumed their meaning from the overall sense of the scene.
The way the book wanders trough the plot without a feasible point for most part is also a bit annoying and it takes almost 200 pages for the last stand/fight to unfold. Not to mention that what seems a key character over the first part of the book, suddenly disappears without a single explanation, when one of our heroes gains his powers and then pops back up again to help in the final fight. There are whole pages of pointless scenes, like Damson Davenport and “the ghost in the machine” in the Green Room.
And why is it that the main characters are divided between offensive and defensive but I always saw the offensive as defensive until the end and the defensive was always offensive. Because going half the book gun fighting, chasing and killing villains and then calling it defensive just seems weird.
Other than that, it wasn’t bad. Some very interesting characters were introduced (maybe to many and most of them went away too fast) and even though the universe needs a bit more explaining, at least it seems like a very interesting one. Having high hopes these flaws are corrected in the next volumes, I intend to pick up at least one more book in the series whenever my TBR pile gets a bit smaller.