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topdragon 's review for:
A Plague of Giants
by Kevin Hearne
Well…this is one of the hardest novels to rate that I have ever experienced. It is at times, absolutely brilliant and at other times, maddeningly frustrating.
First, the positives:
The author, Kevin Hearne, well beloved for his urban fantasy series, "The Iron Druid Chronicles", has proven time and again that he is a master of detail and can weave a great plot. For this new series, “The Seven Kennings” trilogy, he has created an amazing and fascinating world with a well-thought-out magic system. This is true epic fantasy, and in his own words, the plot summarizes as follows:
I love it when an author breaks the mold. Especially an author who is immensely popular for a certain style and then takes risks anyway to explore his/her own passions. Hearne’s storytelling technique in this novel (and presumably for the following two books) most definitely breaks the mold. He uses a bard to tell most of the story…a framing device for a much larger tale…a bard that each day tells the story of the attack of the giants to an audience of refugees. The really cool thing about this bard is that he can physically transform into the person whose point-of-view he is currently relating, including all of their memories he has been privy to. So each day, the bard transforms into 2 or 3 or 4 different people and tells the story of the attack from very personal viewpoints. There is also an intriguing spy plot to the novel and in fact, a major aspect of the novel is the very nature of the bard himself who becomes an unreliable narrator. We readers must decide whether or not he is trustworthy with a true, necessary, and even cathartic tale to tell or if he is peddling lies.
Sounds wonderful but unfortunately, most of it just didn’t work well for me. We readers are plunged right into the middle of the action from the get-go and exposed to dozens and dozens of unfamiliar terms, including place names, character names, strange terminology, etc., all supporting the world building more than the story itself. I am no stranger to dense or challenging fantasy and I feel comfortable that this sort of opening will all mesh together and gel before long. But that didn’t happen here, at least not for a long while. For the first half of the novel, I came close to giving up on it several times.
Since the bard takes on the persona of whomever is telling the tale, he is always describing events from a first-person perspective. While this can lead to more empathy with characters in normally-constructed novels, here it adds to the confusion. No matter which character you’re reading about it is always “I” did this and “I” saw that. These individual stories are also told in a non-chronological order so the time frames also get confusing. And since this is fundamentally a story about war, many of the characters suffer severely and/or die. That’s Ok with me except that sometimes we’ll be sailing along with a character only to have the viewpoint switch and find out that the previous character has just been killed. I never really felt connected to most of the characters and so didn’t really care too much for their fates, a sure sign that all is not well for the book.
So, yes, I was frustrated for most of the first half of the book and I really only kept reading because I did identify with a couple of the characters and was interested in their stories. But the second half of the book did, finally start to gel and I began to gain a better understanding of how all the moving parts fit together. The complete story of what was transpiring and to whom was becoming clear. I wish I had book two ready to go, mainly for fear that I will need to learn all of this over again, a chore I am not relishing. I will have to decide if I am willing to undertake that effort or if I will stop here and pursue other works.
So…to the rating: 2 stars (at best) for the first 25-50%, and 4 stars for the second half. Some sections, particularly near the end when we finally get to experience the battle below “Godsteeth” are definitely in 5-star territory. But taken as a whole, I must settle on 3 stars.
Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey Books for a free electronic ARC in return for an honest review.
First, the positives:
The author, Kevin Hearne, well beloved for his urban fantasy series, "The Iron Druid Chronicles", has proven time and again that he is a master of detail and can weave a great plot. For this new series, “The Seven Kennings” trilogy, he has created an amazing and fascinating world with a well-thought-out magic system. This is true epic fantasy, and in his own words, the plot summarizes as follows:
“A continent that has enjoyed centuries of peace is abruptly attacked by two different giant armies and its people must figure out how to stop forces that appear unstoppable. It’s a second-world fantasy and has nothing in common with Iron Druid — this is a completely new thing. And it’s truly epic, twice as long as any of my Iron Druid books at 624 pages.”The characters are well-designed, unique from each other in every aspect and come from different cultural backgrounds based on their locale and or access to the various kennings (sources of various types of magical powers). This is a world I would like to know much more about and discover more about how it all fits together.
I love it when an author breaks the mold. Especially an author who is immensely popular for a certain style and then takes risks anyway to explore his/her own passions. Hearne’s storytelling technique in this novel (and presumably for the following two books) most definitely breaks the mold. He uses a bard to tell most of the story…a framing device for a much larger tale…a bard that each day tells the story of the attack of the giants to an audience of refugees. The really cool thing about this bard is that he can physically transform into the person whose point-of-view he is currently relating, including all of their memories he has been privy to. So each day, the bard transforms into 2 or 3 or 4 different people and tells the story of the attack from very personal viewpoints. There is also an intriguing spy plot to the novel and in fact, a major aspect of the novel is the very nature of the bard himself who becomes an unreliable narrator. We readers must decide whether or not he is trustworthy with a true, necessary, and even cathartic tale to tell or if he is peddling lies.
Sounds wonderful but unfortunately, most of it just didn’t work well for me. We readers are plunged right into the middle of the action from the get-go and exposed to dozens and dozens of unfamiliar terms, including place names, character names, strange terminology, etc., all supporting the world building more than the story itself. I am no stranger to dense or challenging fantasy and I feel comfortable that this sort of opening will all mesh together and gel before long. But that didn’t happen here, at least not for a long while. For the first half of the novel, I came close to giving up on it several times.
Since the bard takes on the persona of whomever is telling the tale, he is always describing events from a first-person perspective. While this can lead to more empathy with characters in normally-constructed novels, here it adds to the confusion. No matter which character you’re reading about it is always “I” did this and “I” saw that. These individual stories are also told in a non-chronological order so the time frames also get confusing. And since this is fundamentally a story about war, many of the characters suffer severely and/or die. That’s Ok with me except that sometimes we’ll be sailing along with a character only to have the viewpoint switch and find out that the previous character has just been killed. I never really felt connected to most of the characters and so didn’t really care too much for their fates, a sure sign that all is not well for the book.
So, yes, I was frustrated for most of the first half of the book and I really only kept reading because I did identify with a couple of the characters and was interested in their stories. But the second half of the book did, finally start to gel and I began to gain a better understanding of how all the moving parts fit together. The complete story of what was transpiring and to whom was becoming clear. I wish I had book two ready to go, mainly for fear that I will need to learn all of this over again, a chore I am not relishing. I will have to decide if I am willing to undertake that effort or if I will stop here and pursue other works.
So…to the rating: 2 stars (at best) for the first 25-50%, and 4 stars for the second half. Some sections, particularly near the end when we finally get to experience the battle below “Godsteeth” are definitely in 5-star territory. But taken as a whole, I must settle on 3 stars.
Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey Books for a free electronic ARC in return for an honest review.