Despite the fact that there were several things about this
novel that I found highly annoying, it was quite a good story with some rather
endearing primary characters. You feel
almost immediate sympathy for Zagarat, who is quite obviously a good person who
is not only stuck in a rut of a life, but also faced with a difficult decision
in regards to his mother. Fletcher is
more of an anomaly; you’re never seem quite sure of who or what he is, or what
his motivations are. Not to mention Aurora
May, and certainly Devon; we know even less about either of them, but they both
seem such intriguing characters.
The author inserts a LOT of world-building,
atmosphere-setting, back-story that generally has nothing to do with the story,
most of which is just annoying, repetitive drivel. That got real annoying - real fast! Some of it was initiated by Zag and actually
helped to somewhat establish his character as an annoying, easily distracted
dweeb. But much of it was narrator initiated,
and mostly just served to distract from the story and bog down the plot.
The cliché angel and devil on Zag’s shoulders were extremely
annoying as well. Not to mention how
often an expletive of “by the suns” or some such was used. And there were quite a few instances where
things just didn’t seem to jive with prior aspects of the narrative. The story seemed to take a long, drawn out,
indirect, almost boring route as we waited for more of it to unfold. And then it just wrapped up extremely quickly. Zag wasn’t the only one left feeling in a bit
of a funk at the end.
But despite all of the things that I didn’t like about the
book… I still wanted more! I want to
know what happens to the characters and see them in action again! I definitely hope there is a sequel in the
works. The story itself, underneath all
of the extraneous annoying stuff was really quite good, and I would definitely recommend this book, as
long as you have the patience to wade through a bunch of unrelated
rambling.
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