Black Sun Rising, by C. S. Friedman

This is a fun fantasy book (read "fluff" here), which doesn't rise up to the heavens where Tolkien's works belong. It's entertaining, but that's about it. "Black Sun Rising" is the first installment in the Coldfire Trilogy and, as you may very well imagine, it ends with a hook to the sequel. Perhaps you'll be psyched enough to go on reading the series when you reach the end of this book; I feel the drive, but it's not an overwhelming one.

In a way, this follows an approach to magic that is similar to what you find in Robert Jordan's universe. One has to draw energy from the elements of nature in order to do magic in the Coldfire Trilogy's planet of "Erna". Sorcerers and adepts alike manipulate these forces to work their wonders. Nothing new here. What was somewhat annoying to me was the fact that the author simply capitalizes ordinary words to indicate a reference to magic. For instance, when you read something about "Knowing", she's talking about a divination spell. While it seems fair to assume that the readers are smart enough to figure it out after a couple of paragraphs, I didn't like the fact that this was just thrown into the pot without any explanation.

As for the rest, the story is pretty much your run-of-the-mill work of fantasy: set up the stage, introduce the quest, send characters off on the impossible errand to battle evil creatures, etc. Even if somewhat predictable, it's still enjoyable. Just as I took to some characters (Tarrant), I found a few others were lackluster (Vryce). My famous last words about this book: if you read it, you'll probably have an enjoyable time, if you don't read it, you won't miss much.