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A review by kaviarissime
Darksoul by Anna Stephens
1.0
This book was not for me. I love fantasy, it's probably my favourite genre. Battle scenes on the othe hand are my least favourite part of books. I will tolerate them, and sometimes I will even enjoy them, provided they conform to a few simple criteria, but I will never seek them out intentionally. So what makes a battle scene good for me?
- Brevity (not more than one, at most two chapters on the same battle please!)
- Clear stakes (if you are the last men standing between an orc invasion and Middle Earth, I will muster up some enthusiasm, otherwise I would have preferred hearing about the battle from a letter one of the characters is reading after the fact)
- A topography I can follow (ideally make your battle take place on a flat plain where I don't need to worry about it, or if you insist on your battle taking place in a complex environment like a city, make it simple. I can handle the Circles of Gondor, but anything more complex and I will be lost)
Unfortunately, Darksoul falls short on all of the above criteria.
- The entirety of the the second instalment of the Godblind series took place during the siege of Rilporin. Twenty-eight days of fighting over 380 pages - had I know that, I wouldn't even have bothered picking it up, no matter how much I enjoyed the first volume.
- The stakes are not very interesting. At the end of the first book, the old king of Rilporin is dead, his rightful heir is dead, and the second son, who killed his father and brother, is the one trying to take the city. If he lost, who would become king? Some distant cousin we never even get to meet in this book. Is he nice? Would he be a better king? We have no idea. So, on a political level, it's not a fight I care about. What about the Red Lady (the violent deity the attackers follow)? She's been quite successful in converting the people of Rilpor before the battle and there is no indication that winning the battle would slow her down; in fact, we are told the every person who dies in the battle is making her stronger, so from that perspective the battle is kind of a wash. What is left? The life or death of a couple thousand people is in the balance, of course, but in a fantasy world it's just not enough to make me care through a whole book.
- Rilporin has about a hundred different gates, towers and circles with complicated names like Double First and Second Last? This, combined with the dozen POV characters that we jump between while they are moving around the city, and I could just never figure where we were.
In short: I kept skimming through the mediocre battle, hoping to get to the interesting part (ie. the aftermath), which never came. I don't think I will be checking out the last instalment after this.
- Brevity (not more than one, at most two chapters on the same battle please!)
- Clear stakes (if you are the last men standing between an orc invasion and Middle Earth, I will muster up some enthusiasm, otherwise I would have preferred hearing about the battle from a letter one of the characters is reading after the fact)
- A topography I can follow (ideally make your battle take place on a flat plain where I don't need to worry about it, or if you insist on your battle taking place in a complex environment like a city, make it simple. I can handle the Circles of Gondor, but anything more complex and I will be lost)
Unfortunately, Darksoul falls short on all of the above criteria.
- The entirety of the the second instalment of the Godblind series took place during the siege of Rilporin. Twenty-eight days of fighting over 380 pages - had I know that, I wouldn't even have bothered picking it up, no matter how much I enjoyed the first volume.
- The stakes are not very interesting. At the end of the first book, the old king of Rilporin is dead, his rightful heir is dead, and the second son, who killed his father and brother, is the one trying to take the city. If he lost, who would become king? Some distant cousin we never even get to meet in this book. Is he nice? Would he be a better king? We have no idea. So, on a political level, it's not a fight I care about. What about the Red Lady (the violent deity the attackers follow)? She's been quite successful in converting the people of Rilpor before the battle and there is no indication that winning the battle would slow her down; in fact, we are told the every person who dies in the battle is making her stronger, so from that perspective the battle is kind of a wash. What is left? The life or death of a couple thousand people is in the balance, of course, but in a fantasy world it's just not enough to make me care through a whole book.
- Rilporin has about a hundred different gates, towers and circles with complicated names like Double First and Second Last? This, combined with the dozen POV characters that we jump between while they are moving around the city, and I could just never figure where we were.
In short: I kept skimming through the mediocre battle, hoping to get to the interesting part (ie. the aftermath), which never came. I don't think I will be checking out the last instalment after this.