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A review by sneschalmers
The Forgetting Moon by Brian Lee Durfee
4.0
I’m conflicted about this brick of an epic fantasy book.
Plot: compelling mysteries, intrigue, politics, battle, and powerful artifact discovery- sweet!
Characters: meh. I’m not sure what to make of the disparaging language around women and heavy set people. I understand that we are meant to see many of them overcome adversity, but sometimes it felt like the characters were props for including women, differently shaped people, etc, not that these people had a right to be in the story regardless of their make/model. Characters have sudden changes in motivation which were not signaled and I’m not a fan of this. Some characters have motivations that are really bizarre and hard to understand why their actions were included at all (Dokie’s unfortunate pruritus???). Also why is everyone either beautiful and handsome or ugly and homely? There’s rarely a character description of somebody in between. Every main character female with one exception is startlingly beautiful and I’d be more interested in reading about character traits of women that do not lie in beauty or aesthetics.
Pacing: at times breakneck and at times bogged down by info dumps, I found myself reading in sprints with a need to put down for a day or two to muster the energy to wade through the info swamps.
Overall: worth a read, I think I’ll soldier on for the intricate world building and hopefully more organic character development in the second book. For a debut author and novel, this is a stand out book, I look forward to seeing where this author goes with more refinement to his writing over time.
Plot: compelling mysteries, intrigue, politics, battle, and powerful artifact discovery- sweet!
Characters: meh. I’m not sure what to make of the disparaging language around women and heavy set people. I understand that we are meant to see many of them overcome adversity, but sometimes it felt like the characters were props for including women, differently shaped people, etc, not that these people had a right to be in the story regardless of their make/model. Characters have sudden changes in motivation which were not signaled and I’m not a fan of this. Some characters have motivations that are really bizarre and hard to understand why their actions were included at all (Dokie’s unfortunate pruritus???). Also why is everyone either beautiful and handsome or ugly and homely? There’s rarely a character description of somebody in between. Every main character female with one exception is startlingly beautiful and I’d be more interested in reading about character traits of women that do not lie in beauty or aesthetics.
Pacing: at times breakneck and at times bogged down by info dumps, I found myself reading in sprints with a need to put down for a day or two to muster the energy to wade through the info swamps.
Overall: worth a read, I think I’ll soldier on for the intricate world building and hopefully more organic character development in the second book. For a debut author and novel, this is a stand out book, I look forward to seeing where this author goes with more refinement to his writing over time.