Review: Detailed Heroic Fantasy
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 22, 2014
Sons of the Falcon takes the reader a generation beyond the story Blood of the Falcon.  The tale is set in a detailed world with a cast of characters so vast that it almost forces you to make a scorecard to keep track of them all.  (There's a list of the most important ones at the end of the book that I SO wish I had noticed before diving into the story.) If it's been a while since you've read the first book(s), it's worthwhile skimming back through to remind yourselves of everything that happened to Kelyn and Kieryn/Thorn/Dathiel.  The animosities and desires built up in the first books still fester, but peace has ruled the lands since the end of the last book.  As a new generation comes of age, their personalities affect whether peace will continue as well as events set in motion more than a millenia before.The Saga of the Falcons is complicated and the author deftly weaves a myriad of strings together into a rich tale of heroism, duty, loyalty, betrayal, and yes, elves, ogres, and magic!  The world is rich with history and background, its own religion and peoples with a great deal of thought given even to languages.If you enjoy epic high fantasy as I do, you will love this intricately detailed epic. It belongs in the same class as Lord of the Rings and the Song of Ice & Fire (a.k.a. Game of Thrones). However, as much as I enjoyed the story, I just couldn't give it 5 stars. Sons of the Falcon takes a very long time to get moving as the next generation grows up to where they can take center stage.  Too often characters are introduced solely by name - many of which are similar - with few other clues to their identity that I had to dredge through my memory to remember who they were.  Once the story was rolling (more than 100 pages in!), I could not put it down. And then I was horrified (but not surprised) to realize around page 450 that there was no way that the story could end well in just 50 pages, but the next book hasn't been released yet... and naturally, I cannot wait to read it.