Review: Hooked by the introduction, reeled in to the end!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 9, 2012
I usually have to get to the second or third chapter in a book before I start to get into it. The first few paragraphs don't often engage my attention other than to be a means to the part of the book that starts to get interesting. Admittedly, I often skip the introduction if it looks like it's boring or doesn't seem to pertain to the rest of the book. For some writers, the introduction seems to be an appendage to the book that might as well be left out. Just my opinion. However, I was astounded to see that Jeremy Laszlo writes with such skill and grace that I was immediately and pleasantly drawn into his story at the beginning of its introduction. I have been reading a lot of books from new and unknown authors lately. Most of them write interesting reads, but their phrasing is clunky, story structure is superficial, and the story just doesn't seem to flow. Laszlo's writing exhibits none of these. I was surprised to navigate through his writing as if I was floating along with a river that knew its course with certainty and flowed with ease. He writes with the grace of a seasoned author such as Stephen King or Jim Belcher. Beginning with the gods and their struggle, Laszlo leads the reader along a journey with a craving to find out how the human characters will play into the archetypal struggle among the gods. It is the kind of story that a reader fights to put down because it is much easier to stay up late reading as far as possible and live the next day in sleep deprivation than to set the book aside and lay awake wondering what is going to happen next. Yes, Laszlo has caused me to lose sleep, but I am readily forgiving him for it as I prepare to dive into the next installment of this series.