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valwis 's review for:
Lord Foul's Bane
by Stephen R. Donaldson
The only reason this has a generous two stars instead of one is because of the brilliant cast of characters that somehow exist DESPITE the author's terrible decisions. Every time a character was introduced, I thought how the book would be so much better written from their perspective!
The main character is incredibly unlikeable and utterly useless over the course of the journey he's on. He spends a good portion of the book asleep while others make decisions and is obsessed with shaving. He is incredibly insensitive. If he actually contributed to the plot and did anything for more than 0.01% of the novel, I'd call him a Mary Sue. As it stands, there's something Mary Sue ish about him.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of Rape in this paragraph. Soon after arriving in 'the Land', Covenant rapes a sixteen year old girl. This occurs in Chapter Seven. He isn't particularly remorseful of this until at least Chapter Eighteen or so, and even so he speaks more of how he wronged her mother, with who he has formed a fragile friendship of sorts, than the actual girl. It is not even called rape until much further on in the story. He want to make it up to her by sending her a horse every year, which is a terrible 'sorry-I-raped-you' present.
The writing in this story is like the author bit pages out of a thesaurus, then vomited them back onto a page and called it finished. Sentences are often just lists of words, or synonyms. The authour uses the archaic definitions for some words.
Every new location I could not help but compare to the Lord of the Rings. There's a discount Lothlorien, Minas Tirith, Fangorn Forest, Caradhras, Rohan and Moria complete with Khazadum. Gollum makes an appearance in the secondary villain. The primary villain never shows his face but laughs evilly, and appears in a hallucination at one point.
This book nearly put me off of reading for good, and me with walls of shelves of books of all kinds. each chapter I finished felt like a battle I'd won and I felt just as physically and mentally exhausted. I had to force myself to finish the book mostly due to obsessive completionism.
The main character is incredibly unlikeable and utterly useless over the course of the journey he's on. He spends a good portion of the book asleep while others make decisions and is obsessed with shaving. He is incredibly insensitive. If he actually contributed to the plot and did anything for more than 0.01% of the novel, I'd call him a Mary Sue. As it stands, there's something Mary Sue ish about him.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of Rape in this paragraph. Soon after arriving in 'the Land', Covenant rapes a sixteen year old girl. This occurs in Chapter Seven. He isn't particularly remorseful of this until at least Chapter Eighteen or so, and even so he speaks more of how he wronged her mother, with who he has formed a fragile friendship of sorts, than the actual girl. It is not even called rape until much further on in the story. He want to make it up to her by sending her a horse every year, which is a terrible 'sorry-I-raped-you' present.
The writing in this story is like the author bit pages out of a thesaurus, then vomited them back onto a page and called it finished. Sentences are often just lists of words, or synonyms. The authour uses the archaic definitions for some words.
Every new location I could not help but compare to the Lord of the Rings. There's a discount Lothlorien, Minas Tirith, Fangorn Forest, Caradhras, Rohan and Moria complete with Khazadum. Gollum makes an appearance in the secondary villain. The primary villain never shows his face but laughs evilly, and appears in a hallucination at one point.
This book nearly put me off of reading for good, and me with walls of shelves of books of all kinds. each chapter I finished felt like a battle I'd won and I felt just as physically and mentally exhausted. I had to force myself to finish the book mostly due to obsessive completionism.