Review: Tedious
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 5, 2012
I had a hard time with this book.  I wanted to like it.  With so many 5-star ratings, I figured it would be nigh-on can't miss.  It's pretty rare that Amazon reviews have steered me wrong and I've learned to watch for the dissident opinions for things that would turn me off.  Except for one reviewer that made me a little nervous, I took a chance.Unfortunately, there are plenty of issues that make it tough to continue with the series:* Religion:  I'm fine with religious overtones-  plenty of fantasy authors use the same mechanism.  It's a little heavy handed here-  basically a thin veneer of fantasy over what seems to be a hard-core Christianity theme.  A lot of the monologuing seems abit preachy.  The Awoi/Amird story in particular (Chapter 10) seemed overly contrived and way longer than it needed to be.* Formatting:  The formatting is horrible.  The type-face is terrible and the line spacing makes my head hurt (hint: double spacing sucks).* Content:  It's like I'm wading through a knee deep swamp- you keep going forward cause there's no where else to go and occasionally you run into a small island of decent surface; but mostly, it's just tiring.I get that the author is world-building here.  It's important to understand motivation and back-story.  George R.R. Martin is a master at it-  it never feels heavy handed.  But I find myself skipping through pages of monologue to get to the point where the story continues.There are flashes of good stuff-  the Brelg backstory, although long, was pretty good.  The elves are an interesting change from the elves you see in other fantasy stories.  Overall though,  it needs some serious streamlining.  I think there's the kernel of a really good story in there.  It just takes too much work to suss it out.