PhoenixFalls - , reviewed on 8/1/2009 + 185 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

This is a good book. The writing is fairly good, the world well researched and evocative, the action well paced, and the story resolves well emotionally while leaving the larger plot open for the next two novels. Its main flaw is that it seems so terribly familiar. It is an imaginative chronicling of Bridei, son of Maelchon, who ruled the Picts in Scotland in the 11th century, but it could be any number of historical fantasy novels. There is the requisite young boy destined for greatness; his distant but devoted mentor; his boyhood companions, who fall by the wayside; and of course, there is a girl with mystic powers who falls deeply in love with him and who he has sworn to guard but who none of his guardians approves of. There are, of course, obstacles put in the boy's path -- politics and destiny intrude at inopportune times, and everyone goes about making long faces and refusing to listen to each other. Finally, difficulties melt away and the boy steps into the shining light of his destiny as was ordained.

This book did its job well -- I want to read the next one in the series. But I spent the entire time reading it thinking about how I had seen every character before (with the minor exception of Faolan, who I want more of but who would probably disappoint me if I got what I wanted), and how ridiculously simple resolution of everyone's problems would be if they simply sat down and talked to one another. That, I think, was the biggest failing of the book for me; I get so tired of novels where people -- supposedly GREAT people -- make the simple things in life so complicated by refusing to speak of them. It was the same difficulty I had with The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (which of course also featured a young boy destined for greatness), but I was able to rate that novel higher because it didn't have the added annoyance of doomed lovers thrown in.

I wish there was more fantasy written by authors who worked a little harder at developing their conflicts. Take Lois McMaster Bujold's dictum of simply throwing the worst thing possible at her characters and seeing how they do; you wouldn't find as many plots hinging on simple misunderstanding. Follow Patricia McKillip's example and make your characters fundamentally opposed to each other as they are in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld or Alphabet of Thorn, or if you don't want to do that, give them a real opponent -- not assassins that are always bested just in time and an election that is never really in doubt. In short, write about adults, not these perennial teenagers, and especially not precocious youngsters that are more staid and set in their ways than many an old man of eighty.

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