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anbar 's review for:
Blood Song
by Anthony Ryan
The run-on sentences. Dear God, the run-on sentences. Appearing on every page, sometimes three times a paragraph, often making what was supposed to be an emotional or intense moment feel like a stream of delirious fever-dream rambling instead (forcing me to interrupt myself and re-read a section in the register or flow it was *supposed* to have).
Examples: "None of them escaped unscathed, Vaelin bore a livid scar on the back of his hand where a speck of molten metal landed, the pain and the smell of his own skin burning was uniquely sickening." "The enraged Alpirans fought back savagely, more than a few knights disappeared under the mass of stamping hooves, but they had neither the numbers nor the steel to stand against such an onslaught."
The constant mental editing really takes away from the experience of the story, to the point that I don't know if I'll be able to finish. Periods and semicolons: they're important!
My second gripe: I'm over 100 pages in and we're still in an almost excruciating account of the protagonist's schooling/training. It's not as dull as it could be and I can tell it's important to get to know this cast of characters, but it still drags a bit, especially after what sounded like a very interesting prologue--I want to get to the Hope-Killer part and I feel like we're 1000 pages away! ;_;
I'll soldier on for a few more pages to see if anything happens to give the story some momentum, but at this point I just don't know.
Edit: Okay, so things did pick up around page 130 and it became a more interesting story from there. But I'm still giving it only 3 stars because of the long wait and the constant run-on sentences...and one instance of describing someone's pale pallor (seriously, where was the editor?!). I might pick up the next volume later, but for now I need a rest from the constant mental editing.
Examples: "None of them escaped unscathed, Vaelin bore a livid scar on the back of his hand where a speck of molten metal landed, the pain and the smell of his own skin burning was uniquely sickening." "The enraged Alpirans fought back savagely, more than a few knights disappeared under the mass of stamping hooves, but they had neither the numbers nor the steel to stand against such an onslaught."
The constant mental editing really takes away from the experience of the story, to the point that I don't know if I'll be able to finish. Periods and semicolons: they're important!
My second gripe: I'm over 100 pages in and we're still in an almost excruciating account of the protagonist's schooling/training. It's not as dull as it could be and I can tell it's important to get to know this cast of characters, but it still drags a bit, especially after what sounded like a very interesting prologue--I want to get to the Hope-Killer part and I feel like we're 1000 pages away! ;_;
I'll soldier on for a few more pages to see if anything happens to give the story some momentum, but at this point I just don't know.
Edit: Okay, so things did pick up around page 130 and it became a more interesting story from there. But I'm still giving it only 3 stars because of the long wait and the constant run-on sentences...and one instance of describing someone's pale pallor (seriously, where was the editor?!). I might pick up the next volume later, but for now I need a rest from the constant mental editing.