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A review by joeri81
Seasons of War by Daniel Abraham
3.0
I finally finished the "Long Price Quartet". I read the series in two omnibus editions and it took me a lot longer than I thought it would. It's not that I didn't like the books, they have a lot of qualities, but I wasn't really drawn to them. Especially the story lacked in parts to fully interest me. Luckily this improved with the second omnibus. See below a full review for each of the two books included in it.
An Autumn War:
This is definitely the best of the four, mainly because it is the most exciting of the bunch. The writting is great in all four books, it has amazing characters that are nicely developed (one of the main strenghts of the books), but overall the books lack in excitement and tension. The third book is the one least suffering from it.
It also has the biggest scope of the four books. It introduces the Galt as an actual threat while the Galt were mostly mentioned in scheming against the Khaiem in the previous two books. With General Gice we also have a Galt as a POV for the first time in the series. He is set on destroying the poets and their andats and has the perfect plan to accomplish this. What we get is war and destruction against the Khaiem. The story unfolds in Machi with an amazing and unexpected twist!
Rating: 7.8/10
The Price Of Spring
Overall a good book and a nice conclusion for the series.
The problem is that it centers mainly around one plot in the story. There are several other story lines (pending war in Chaburi-Tan with pirates, conspiracy against Otah in Tan-Sadar, ...), but these aren't really investigated. The story would have profited massively from it if a couple more POV's had been added. This way these POV's could have followed up on these story lines. There were possibilities for this but these were not taken. This means we are left with 2 POV's, Otah en Maati, and a story that is focusing on their challanges and their internal conflicts and thoughts. In this final book these challenges are especially linked to the consequences of the previous book. The people in Galt and the Khaiem are facing an aging population which makes them easy targets for foreign threats. Both Otah and Maati try to rectify the mistakes from the past with their own resources and tackle these issues how they think would be best. This leads however to another more important threat that could mean the end of the whole world ...
I can say once again that the book is amazing at what it does (character development), but overall I still feel it lacks in content/story. The fact that it focuses mainly on one story line makes it a bit one-sided. I'd say this book is about on par with the second book, slightly less probably.
Rating :7.1/10
Conclusion
This omnibus was better than the first one with the third book being the best in the series and the last one providing a satisfying ending.
The series as a whole is good; it has great writing, very good character development, good worldbuilding with innovative magic. It unfortunately lacks a bit in story to keep me interested. I never had issues reading the story but I wasn't much drawn to it either.
As an overall rating I would give the series 7.2/10
An Autumn War:
This is definitely the best of the four, mainly because it is the most exciting of the bunch. The writting is great in all four books, it has amazing characters that are nicely developed (one of the main strenghts of the books), but overall the books lack in excitement and tension. The third book is the one least suffering from it.
It also has the biggest scope of the four books. It introduces the Galt as an actual threat while the Galt were mostly mentioned in scheming against the Khaiem in the previous two books. With General Gice we also have a Galt as a POV for the first time in the series. He is set on destroying the poets and their andats and has the perfect plan to accomplish this. What we get is war and destruction against the Khaiem. The story unfolds in Machi with an amazing and unexpected twist!
Rating: 7.8/10
The Price Of Spring
Overall a good book and a nice conclusion for the series.
The problem is that it centers mainly around one plot in the story. There are several other story lines (pending war in Chaburi-Tan with pirates, conspiracy against Otah in Tan-Sadar, ...), but these aren't really investigated. The story would have profited massively from it if a couple more POV's had been added. This way these POV's could have followed up on these story lines. There were possibilities for this but these were not taken. This means we are left with 2 POV's, Otah en Maati, and a story that is focusing on their challanges and their internal conflicts and thoughts. In this final book these challenges are especially linked to the consequences of the previous book. The people in Galt and the Khaiem are facing an aging population which makes them easy targets for foreign threats. Both Otah and Maati try to rectify the mistakes from the past with their own resources and tackle these issues how they think would be best. This leads however to another more important threat that could mean the end of the whole world ...
I can say once again that the book is amazing at what it does (character development), but overall I still feel it lacks in content/story. The fact that it focuses mainly on one story line makes it a bit one-sided. I'd say this book is about on par with the second book, slightly less probably.
Rating :7.1/10
Conclusion
This omnibus was better than the first one with the third book being the best in the series and the last one providing a satisfying ending.
The series as a whole is good; it has great writing, very good character development, good worldbuilding with innovative magic. It unfortunately lacks a bit in story to keep me interested. I never had issues reading the story but I wasn't much drawn to it either.
As an overall rating I would give the series 7.2/10