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A review by brennanaphone
Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan
2.0
For Avempartha: A Weak 3 Stars
The second book is a vast improvement over the first, though it still has its flaws. The beats he had in the first book that were interesting are handled much more gracefully in this installment, with a lot of tension being built up over the beast and the villagers and what's in the tower. The writing is cleaner, brisker, punchier, and more engrossing. The representation of women continues to be abysmal, though. His description of a 17-year-old minor grossed me the eff out, and Arista just gets less interesting and more damsel-y with every chapter, hardly the confident, wily, and magical woman she was going to be in the first few chapters. Yet an old male farmer can be become the master of a sword in three days, because this is a male power fantasy book and not much else. It seems like there's some interesting (if ham-fisted) worldbuilding happening now, but he's pretty bad at weaving it in, and a lot of it comes out in these torrents of exposition-filled dialogue that my brain just glossed right over (also, what kind of characters seem unsure about the names of their own gods?).
For Crown Conspiracy: 1 Star
Kind of earnest and straightforward, not much else to it. Thieves, princes, princesses, whores (gotta have whores! /s), monks--everyone is exactly what you think they're going to be. The intrigue stuff that was somewhat engaging was often marred by awkward writing, and the questions raised about character backstory weren't enough to sustain the plot. It'd have been two stars just because it felt like a freshman attempt at writing and the genre in general except for the way the "underclass" was depicted as violent rioters and the potentially interesting and educated woman was reduced to a damsel in distress.
The second book is a vast improvement over the first, though it still has its flaws. The beats he had in the first book that were interesting are handled much more gracefully in this installment, with a lot of tension being built up over the beast and the villagers and what's in the tower. The writing is cleaner, brisker, punchier, and more engrossing. The representation of women continues to be abysmal, though. His description of a 17-year-old minor grossed me the eff out, and Arista just gets less interesting and more damsel-y with every chapter, hardly the confident, wily, and magical woman she was going to be in the first few chapters. Yet an old male farmer can be become the master of a sword in three days, because this is a male power fantasy book and not much else. It seems like there's some interesting (if ham-fisted) worldbuilding happening now, but he's pretty bad at weaving it in, and a lot of it comes out in these torrents of exposition-filled dialogue that my brain just glossed right over (also, what kind of characters seem unsure about the names of their own gods?).
For Crown Conspiracy: 1 Star
Kind of earnest and straightforward, not much else to it. Thieves, princes, princesses, whores (gotta have whores! /s), monks--everyone is exactly what you think they're going to be. The intrigue stuff that was somewhat engaging was often marred by awkward writing, and the questions raised about character backstory weren't enough to sustain the plot. It'd have been two stars just because it felt like a freshman attempt at writing and the genre in general except for the way the "underclass" was depicted as violent rioters and the potentially interesting and educated woman was reduced to a damsel in distress.