Review: Shadow's Edge

Shadow's Edge by Brent Weeks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Not particularly impressed by the writing or the plot. As with the first book in the series, I found this a fun and shallow read. It's a fluffy fantasy series, in the tradition of most of those filling the shelves in bookstores. Medieval setting, warring knights, troubled nobles, and best of all (for my taste, at least), plenty of magic. Kylar is a repenting assassin (or "wetboy") trying to mend his ways and restart life as a herbalist, when "they pulled him back in" to a large conflict between nations and a fight against evil. If it sounds like standard fare, it's because it is. I keep reading fantasy searching for that experience of being 18 and reading Raymond Feist's Magician for the first time, but it hardly ever pays off. Some that came close were Garth Nix Abhorsen and Carol Berg's Rai Kirah. Tad Williams' Memory Sorrow and Thorn was immensely satisfying in so many ways. The Night Angel series, though, I find fun and somewhat forgettable at the same time.



View all my reviews

Review: The Pillars of the Earth

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



It's a gripping read, from beginning to end. Character development is excellent; even if some of them seem a bit cookie cutter, they have plenty of background and you empathize deeply with them. At some point, perhaps half-way through, I started to think that the author was jerking me around with too many twists and turns. Something ultimately bad happens just to set the stage for something utterly blissful. And then it reverses. You have something beautiful followed by a horrifying event. It's like driving along a road with one switch back after the other - it felt tiring for a moment or two. But... it's so well done that you just have to get to the destination, so I let myself go and in the end, really enjoyed the ride. I turned the last page a couple of hours ago; I'm still grieving not having those characters in my life anymore.



View all my reviews