LOG notes "This book was really slow for me to get into. It didn't start really getting good until about page 450 (out of ~575). The story is mainly internal dialog so the plot line moves very slowly. Some of that internal dialog is pretty profound, but a lot of it is seems excessive and unnecessary. I would not compare this with George RR Martin unless you were only talking about the court intrigue stuff, otherwise they are nothing alike really.
It seems to me like Bakker is trying too hard to use fancy words, strange names, and cryptic speech. I enjoy a difficult read, but I don't enjoy a read where the author looks like he used a thesaurus on every word and it doesn't flow at all.
This book does have a lot of unique elements, and interesting concepts. I wish he would go into more details on some of the methods of the Dunyain, but I can see how that would be very difficult.
Even though I have some issues with the book I will still read the entire series to see if it gets less flowery and a little meatier. The characters are interesting enough to keep me tied to his story. His synopsis of the first book, at the beginning of the second book, is nice because he writes it straight and to the point, without such a flourish of words so it actually clears up some points of the story and gives me hope that his first-book-proving-my-skills-verbosity cools down a little bit."
Read LOG's review
This book was really slow for me to get into. It didn't start really getting good until about page 450 (out of ~575). The story is mainly internal dialog so the plot line moves very slowly. Some of that internal dialog is pretty profound, but a lot of it is seems excessive and unnecessary. I would not compare this with George RR Martin unless you were only talking about the court intrigue stuff, otherwise they are nothing alike really.
It seems to me like Bakker is trying too hard to use fancy words, strange names, and cryptic speech. I enjoy a difficult read, but I don't enjoy a read where the author looks like he used a thesaurus on every word and it doesn't flow at all.
This book does have a lot of unique elements, and interesting concepts. I wish he would go into more details on some of the methods of the Dunyain, but I can see how that would be very difficult.
Even though I have some issues with the book I will still read the entire series to see if it gets less flowery and a little meatier. The characters are interesting enough to keep me tied to his story. His synopsis of the first book, at the beginning of the second book, is nice because he writes it straight and to the point, without such a flourish of words so it actually clears up some points of the story and gives me hope that his first-book-proving-my-skills-verbosity cools down a little bit.
