Review: The Tiger's Eye - Interesting, Uneven, Retro feel 3.5 Stars
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 11, 2014
Treasure quest.  This feels like the early Dungeons & Dragons computer games being narrated into a book.  The magic system where the mage always has to study the spell scrolls is explained well enough that for the first time I sort of believe it.  After all, although I can knot, knit and weave, I still need to consult a written pattern most of the time.  Another retro device is the clean slate amnesia plotline as seen in The Bourne Identity and many computer games.  The uneven part is the choice of details included or not included and peripheral characters that seem like they should be significant but are poorly developed or left hanging.  Why mention a cobbler in the early chapters, again in the middle and we never meet him?  Maybe in book #2.  Why are there tall poles in the middle of caravan campsites, and with all the other questions our lead mage keep on asking why not that one.  I really don't need to see our guy skinning a capybara or opossum critter, or deciding to take a piss.  Early Simon R. Green and R. A. Salvatore and Tracy Weis & Hickman do this a bit better.  Nevertheless, the plotline is interesting enough that I will try a second helping.  What I mean by the retro video game feel is that there is a questing party with a mage, a thief/rogue, an elven ranger type who is three people or one person in 3 bodies, a basic fighter and healers and temples and weird sects and dwarves that drink a lot.  If those books and games appeal to you, you may like this.  I did enjoy it, uneven though it was, because few people are writing this genre now.