Review: All in good fun
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 3, 2012
This is yet another silly wizard-growing-up book, following the same story arc you know from a thousand other wizard-themed coming-of-age books you've already read, but it has several things that really recommend it over other books:- Characters and societies are genuinely, consistently multi-dimensional, but without giving in to the temptation to have everyone have a "saving grace" that forgives all their flaws.- The author does not feel the need to Superman II his protagonist.  The man is genuinely, ridiculously overpowered in every way, and his main struggle is against himself as he figures out how to handle phenomenal cosmic power without abusing it.  As it should be: no random, stupid weaknesses, no "oh, wait, never mind, now there is a more powerful enemy that's in no way a retcon of the setting" and no cheap deus ex machina drama.- The story resists the urge to try to turn fear of people that can rip apart kingdoms with their mind if they have a bad day at work into some kind of allegory for racism.  While the protagonists are the traditional must-save-everyone knight-in-shining-armor types, the traditional holocaust allegory is almost continuously lampshaded by people pointing out that wanting to eliminate walking weapons of mass destruction that already knocked the world back into the stone age once is not an inherently unreasonable position.Basically, this is one of the more competently-structured of the electronic-pulp fantasy tales that Amazon carries.  If you're a fan of the "wizards growing up" subgenre, you'll enjoy this.  If you just enjoy epic fantasy in general, you'll probably like it too.