Elizabeth B. (Cattriona) - reviewed on 7/3/2011 + 200 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

Please don't read this trilogy -- you'll weep with frustration for what could have been. The series starts well, the author lays a good back story with interesting characters. Book 2 continues the series, stretching the boundaries of believability a bit, but keeps the reader interested. Book 3 blows all of this hard work into excrement.

The author clearly knows where he wants to go to end things, but doesn't know how to get there, so the finale is filled with clumsy writing, a truckload of "oh, isn't that convenient?" plot elements and awkward similes, things like the Hero's blade slicing into an enemy's guts "like a comb slides through a princess' hair." Puh-leeze.

Having built up this alternative, old-fashioned universe, the author ruins our suspension of disbelief with Biblical allusions (i.e. Daniel 5:27) and references to very recent scientific discoveries (i.e. aspen groves as a single organism).

At times, the author is so lost that he doesn't even try to plausibly explain anything: When the Hero tries to rescue a Heroine, he tells us that the unknown spell holding the heroine will "crush her skull". How do we know this will this is true? "[Hero] didn't question how he knew it, but he did." Well, the readers are questioning when you became magically omnipotent ...

Sadly, the best thing to do with this series (which had a lot of potential) is to never start it. Not recommended.

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