After the disaster that was my last read, this book was a delight! It wasn't perfect and if it had followed something like Doug Hurlick's Among Thieves it might not have been such a success but such as it is, this book is well worth a read.
The storyline is pretty simple, telling of a young convicted thief's son, who's working as a shepherd to escape his father's crimes, is found by a wizard and offered power he has not really dreamt about. Couple that with his more than decent knowledge of sword-play you'd think he'd have an easy ride to the status he has never had... Nothing could be more wrong. The author has no qualms about making things difficult for his character, he spends more time injured, shunned or being tortured than getting where he needs to be, it makes a welcome change from reading about characters that are good at everything or learn everything easily.
The book has a good mix of politics, magic and dragons and the plot twists in good ways during the first two thirds of the book. It got a little predictable at the end and I felt as though the ending had been rushed a bit. We all like our hero's to win the day and get the girl but in this book, the girl turned out to be someone he'd had a two minute conversation with at the start of the book and not seen since until right at the end. She seemed more of a plot point than a real character.
There are other characters in the novel that could be a bit more developed as well. The wizard who finds our hero plays a major part at the start of the novel, gets injured and then is never seen again. Why did he go to all the effort of fetching the young shepherd if you're going to ignore him... Even after you recover?
The world is well thought out and the magic system the author has used is different to what I have read before which is a welcome change. It is a step away from your traditional fire throwing cliche and a step towards something else, this alone makes the book worth a peruse.
Despite these flaws, this novel is well worth a read. I enjoyed it and will be reading the follow up sometime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment