Thinblade - David A Wells

This book wasn't great, in fact, I don't even think it was that good. I couldn't finish it due to a number of reasons although I did try my best to do so. It has it's OK moments but those are far outweighed by the books downfalls.

I'll start with the positive; most of the characters are well rounded individuals and a lot of thought has gone into their development. The protagonist is a carbon copy of your generic hero and as a result is dull, uninteresting and predictable. The support cast is far more interesting, there's an alchemist character, Lucky, who has all kinds of different tricks that he uses to aid the group. He also has a big interest in food and often hands it out to people while conducting his affairs, this little detail is what makes him a better character than all the others in the novel put together.

The relationships between the characters is shown very well in points though the  novel, I won't go into it much but to illustrate my point there's this. After the hero thinks his father has been killed, someone shouts for 'Lord Valentine', at this point, our hero starts looking around, assuming the call was for his father, not him. It was a nice touch.

Some of the writing in the novel is very good, in fact, aside from the odd cliche here and there, its well written. What annoyed me so much I had to put the book down, was the constant repetition of the plot. I'm savvy enough to know what's happening the first time, one recap is OK, every time we meet a new character is just too much, it was like having it rammed down my throat and not to mention a little patronising. It got to a point where these little reminders would happen just before a fight. It destroyed the tension the author had created in previous paragraphs and interrupted the pacing.

Then there's the description. This book has more than it's fair share of description, of everything, all the time. It got boring to read. I don't really care what the guy fighting the hero looks like, where he came from or what he had for lunch. I care about how he gets killed. It's the same for every building they come across. Yes, I admit, its well written and some of its useful, but it could use thinning out to help the flow of the novel and to keep the reader interested.

You'd think with all that description that everything would be covered in the book right? Not so, there was an episode in the novel where generic hero has to rescue generic princess from generic bad guy. He does so after gaining a huge chunk of skills for free (he reads a skillbook... seriously?) and mullering the henchmen, great. What is omitted is how the baddie escapes. You just get a short sentence saying he got away. How? With all this descriptive power, you'd think Wells would be able to come up with something better than that. Most disappointing!

All in all, I wouldn't recommend reading this book in its current state. It needs another read through and the issues with it fixing before I even consider looking at the sequel.

Approaching the Dark Age - Resonace: Matthew Chivers

I didn't expect to be posting this so quickly, but at 36% I had to call it quits. This novel was so appallingly written I just couldn't finish it. I'm not even sure where to start but I shall give it a go.

The technical aspects of writing have been ignored by the author of this book. I can forgive over use of adverbs and even pardon the contradiction of adjectives but the double negative sentence, 'It could not take no more' was a bit of a slap in the face. The children in my primary class (age 7-9) know not to use language like this, how a grown man doesn't I cannot fathom. Chivers also tends to overwrite things, using four words where one would suffice. This makes some scenes rather dull.

I tried to look passed all the technicalities though and focused on the characters instead. I found them flat, one dimensional and predictable. The priestess did a wonderful job of explaining how magic worked in their world using good scientific terms. This was immediately contradicted by labelling it 'magic' and shrugging off the previous explanation. The Tribal character is a moody, rude adolescent boy who has forgotten half his past. Problem with him is he's so rude, I didn't care what happened to him. These two pair up with a gang of Packers, consisting of about seventeen people, only four of which are important enough to have names. Might as well just stick them in red shirts and shoot them now.

The pacing of the novel seems to be one fight scene after another with a bit of travelling between locations. It became predictable after the second fight. The writing of these scenes was OK but weakened by the author putting the shouting in a bold type face. I can see they're yelling, no need to patronise me in this manner.

There are loads of other things wrong with this novel; irrelevant quotes at the start of chapters; wooden dialogue; contradictory attitudes. So many in fact that I could be here all day and I'll get comments like TLDR. It's frustrating because with a bit of refining and three more rounds of editing, it would make a decent story. Needless to say, I won't be reading the sequel!