Since I just finished the book up this morning, I'm in the mood to hear what others thought. I'm just going to start by repeating what I just posted as an amazon.com review (though I'll take advantage of some formatting tools here that I didn't see there).
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Readers who delight in Linnaean taxonomy (and don't mind some pretty dreadful faux Latin) might classify this excellent novel as ficcionus gamus-->dungeonus et dragonus-->realmsus forgottiones-->eddicionus quartus. Which is to say it's a new Forgotten Realms novel, specifically one in that is set some hundred years farther along the time line that most of the other books in that shared universe.
If you don't know what any of that means, don't worry. It won't effect your enjoyment of the novel at all, and you may even find yourself moved to pick up other Realms novels. I know I'll certainly be ordering this author's earlier entry in the line, The Howling Delve.
If you're already a Realms fan, then take heart. Whenever and wherever it happens to be set, these are still the Realms you love, and here's a story told by an author who obviously loves them as well. And luckily for all readers, Jaleigh Johnson is also an author of wit, grace, and style. Her voice is strong, and perfectly pitched for a fiction that demands a great deal of its characters--a range of memorable people bearing memorable burdens (burdens sometimes made out of the very stuff of memory).
Other reviewers have laid out plot details for those who need them. Instead of doing that, I'll make a comparison. The novel that kept springing to mind as I read this wasn't another Realms book, but it was a fantasy novel. Johnson shares China Miéville's fascination with the motifs of scars and wounds, and as readers do in his estimable novel The Scar, they'll here find scars which are purely physical aplenty, but also those which are psychological and emotional, magical and mundane, and even architectural and geographical.
This is fine novel.
Unfortunately, the ending was really weak to me. Personally, I don't think it was supposed to be, but, for whatever reason, the end didn't hit me as I believe JJ meant it to.
Either way, I think the book was good and the author has a great start.
And, for you happy people, I'm damn picky!!!
I liked the mean elves though. What a contrast to the usual lore pre The Last Mythal.
...but rotten Elves just makes me want to turn aroud see what's what. :P
Also, I'm finding novels by non-designers far more platable lately... its nice to read a book that doesn't nuke the setting in some way. The deigner/authors tend to over-steer things too much in their works.
-The Howling Delve was a terrible novel, in my opinion. The story dragged for most of the novel, and most characters didn't develop a rapport with me, such that, I truthfully didn't care if they succeeded, failed, or whatever else they did. I wouldn't bother with it.
Thanks, Lord Karsus. That doesn't jibe with what I've heard from others, and the reviews of it by folks I've come to trust were generally pretty positive. Hmmm. Well, since I've already called the store and asked them to get it for me, here's hoping that this is one instance where our tastes diverge.
*Like "impossibly good". Or, in other terms and for comparisson, Shadowbred, Realms of Elves, and Shadowstorm got 4,5; 4,6 and 4,8 respectively.
...but rotten Elves just makes me want to turn aroud see what's what. :p
-I thought all Elves were rotten? ;)
18DELTA
Spellscars leave me running away as fast as I can...
...but rotten Elves just makes me want to turn aroud see what's what. :P
As my last reply was wiped, I will simply be polite: Does that mean you are now interested, good sir?
