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bookish_slagathor 's review for:
The Misenchanted Sword: A Legend of Ethshar
by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Holy carp, I'm sorry to say this, but this was the most boring book I've read, not just this year, but in the last 20 years at least! The only reason I'm not giving it a one star, because it was not insulting or outright unreadable. Also the epilogue made me nose-exhale, so my final rating will be 2.5 rounded down to 2.
So what was so wrong with this book? Let's look at the plot first, or rather, it's lack of existence. Because, there is no real plot to speak of. The "plot", if you will, is Vader's life, but only the boring parts. You see, lots of exciting things DO happen in this book, like assassinations gone wrong and all that, but you don't get to read about any of that. Nope, you only get to see Valder being unhappy and lounging about and then later on, Valder being content and lounging about.
When I started reading this, judging from the cover with the castle and the dragon flying about and the time it was written, I expected some heroic fantasy, maybe along the lines of Dragonlance with a bit more humor mixed into it (hence the humor tag). Nope, none of that. To sum the story up: Valder gets magic sword that's bound to him, he gets back to his army, he gets special assignments cause of magic sword (which you only get to hear about, never actually see) and then after a while he turns into an innkeeper and tries to figure out his complicated situation that was caused by said magic sword. That's it, that's the story. The end.
This whole thing wouldn't be THAT bad if Valder at least had some semblance of interesting personality, but he is as boring as stale tap water. The only things I learned about him, that he is quite a chill dude, hates killing people and just wants a peaceful life. That's all. I mean, don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying a good MC has to be this dramatic personae to be interesting, but this one is lacking... everything. He has virtually no personality traits besides what I've listed above. None. It's okay to read about an everyday MC, but even everyday people have more color than this 2D paper cutout does.
I'll give the book this though, it's quite progressive considering when it was written. But I can't understand where the humor tag came from, because apart from a few nose-exhale moments, nothing humorous really happened to warrant it.
I think I would best describe this as some sort of fantasy slice of life thing. But the thing is, I've consumed enough of the slice of life genre to say, this even sort of fails at that. Since nothing really exciting happens throughout the book, it's lacking any sort of arc and just meanders in a semi-straight line, which even for a slice of life story, is just boring as hell.
So yea, I don't think I'd recommend this book with a clear conscience to anyone, except if they are specifically looking for something with zero excitement. And I'll probably be skipping the rest of the books in this series and from this author, because it seems I don't vibe well with his writing style.
So what was so wrong with this book? Let's look at the plot first, or rather, it's lack of existence. Because, there is no real plot to speak of. The "plot", if you will, is Vader's life, but only the boring parts. You see, lots of exciting things DO happen in this book, like assassinations gone wrong and all that, but you don't get to read about any of that. Nope, you only get to see Valder being unhappy and lounging about and then later on, Valder being content and lounging about.
When I started reading this, judging from the cover with the castle and the dragon flying about and the time it was written, I expected some heroic fantasy, maybe along the lines of Dragonlance with a bit more humor mixed into it (hence the humor tag). Nope, none of that. To sum the story up: Valder gets magic sword that's bound to him, he gets back to his army, he gets special assignments cause of magic sword (which you only get to hear about, never actually see) and then after a while he turns into an innkeeper and tries to figure out his complicated situation that was caused by said magic sword. That's it, that's the story. The end.
This whole thing wouldn't be THAT bad if Valder at least had some semblance of interesting personality, but he is as boring as stale tap water. The only things I learned about him, that he is quite a chill dude, hates killing people and just wants a peaceful life. That's all. I mean, don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying a good MC has to be this dramatic personae to be interesting, but this one is lacking... everything. He has virtually no personality traits besides what I've listed above. None. It's okay to read about an everyday MC, but even everyday people have more color than this 2D paper cutout does.
I'll give the book this though, it's quite progressive considering when it was written. But I can't understand where the humor tag came from, because apart from a few nose-exhale moments, nothing humorous really happened to warrant it.
I think I would best describe this as some sort of fantasy slice of life thing. But the thing is, I've consumed enough of the slice of life genre to say, this even sort of fails at that. Since nothing really exciting happens throughout the book, it's lacking any sort of arc and just meanders in a semi-straight line, which even for a slice of life story, is just boring as hell.
So yea, I don't think I'd recommend this book with a clear conscience to anyone, except if they are specifically looking for something with zero excitement. And I'll probably be skipping the rest of the books in this series and from this author, because it seems I don't vibe well with his writing style.