Review: Savant? Idiot? Idiot Savant??
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 13, 2013
The story is told first-person through the eyes of "Tor". Tor has a lot of internal self dialog, some good and some bad. I feel that the author has done a very poor job of giving the reader enough information to allow us to view Tor accurately. Tor goes from creating his first magic spell for class, to creating world wonders...all in the course of a week or two. How? What makes Tor so special? Is he special? If so, compared to what? is he some sort of Savant? How can Tor have absolutely no clue about the value of the spells he creates? Is he an idiot?Is Tor an Idiot Savant? I'm not even being sarcastic...there is tons of evidence that while Tor has a unique Talent, that otherwise he is a few notches below "not very bright". This is a quote from the last pages of the book:"Finally, thankfully, Sara explained the situation to simple little Tor. She was good like that."That comes from Tor's own first person perspective. This tone is consistent throughout the book and it really made me curious if the author was attempting to put us inside the head of an idiot savant. If so, that's kind of interesting...but this needed to be explained to the reader much better. If not, then the author has taken a cutesy-bumpkin viewpoint to such an extreme that it really hurts the story.Not sure if I'll read the next book. There was something innately appealing under the surface here, but I'm still not sure what the author's intent was for Tor.