Review: A Bland Epic
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 12, 2012
I wish that Amazon let us do reviews in increments of half-stars.  This is much more of a three and a half star book.It is reasonably well written.  The dialogue in the beginning makes some rookie mistakes.  The characters grin and smile too much when they speak.  It seemed like the author was looking in his thesaurus for different words so that he would have to use the verb "say."  However, the dialogue does get better as the book progresses.  And at least what the characters say is said well enough.  It's never great, but it's fine.People have compared this author to Eddings, and to Tolkien.  There is a reason for that.  The hero, young Garion, quickly meets up with an old man visited him often as a youth - we'll call him BelGandalf, and his manservant who only appears to be a mute, Aragorn.  In Rivendell - I mean, Luxlor, a party is formed, including Silk, the Elven Master of Spies, and Garion's cousin, the Elven Prince Legolas.  We quickly find out that the Dark Lord SauronTorakAmird is out to get him, because he is the lost heir to the throne of RivArnor.  This is of course kept hidden from Garion . . .Yeah.  It's derivative and not as imaginative as I would like.In all fairness, most fantasy is derivative.  There are only so many tropes, and let's face it - Tolkien casts such a shadow over the genre that it's hard to avoid even where an author tries.  Nevertheless, it can still be done well even if it is derivative, and this book isn't done as well as I would like.This book lacks the depth and feel of Tolkien.  It also lacks the spark and humor of Edding's Belgariad.  Fortunately, it also lacks the terrible humor of Edding's later work.I give this four stars, not because I really liked it - it was okay - but because outside of the dialogue problems in the beginning, it's good enough.  No major editing errors, the dialogue is okay, it's got some polish, the voice that the author uses isn't annoying - nothing particularly wrong in this book.  But there isn't much that stands out, either.It's a bland, generic epic.  I liked it just enough - and it got better sufficiently - that I'm seriously considering buying the sequels.