Review: 5 Stars!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 10, 2012
After reading Mark Whiteway's Lodestone trilogy, I can only wonder why I hadn't heard of it before! I love a good scifi/fantasy, and this is some of the best scifi that I've come across in quite some time. Out of 5 stars, this one gets all 5, hands down.I loved the rich character development, the magnetic technology and unique physics, and the excellent plot development and progression throughout the read. I was somewhat reminded of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series as I learned more about this special world and the characters interacting in it, but the Lodestone trilogy certainly maintains a world in its own right, without seeming like rewritten copy of any particular scifi that I have encountered.Whiteway's descriptions throughout the series give just the right amount of detail without boring the reader with too many "background props" and not enough action, as many other scifi novels tend to do. The action scenes were intense, and truly make the reader feel connected to the struggling characters as they fight for their lives and struggle with the inevitable corruption that goes hand-in-hand with any group's rise to - or retention of - power.Criticisms? I don't really have much to complain about with this work, but I could have used a bit more detail in the maps, and the sheer number of characters introduced in the beginning made it somewhat difficult to keep track of who is who at first. That being said, each character's unique personality, speech, and thought processes still ease the reader's transition into Whiteway's delightful world, and I found the new information to be fairly easy to become familiar with.I will be looking for more from Mark Whiteway, to be sure.