Review: Good book, but too many points of view
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 10, 2013
Great writing, great story.  This book really does a good job handling the meeting of two genres from a logical and story-telling perspective.  The only reason I did not give it 5 stars is because there were just soooo many different perspectives.  So many that you could not keep who's who straight.  Some characters stories only barely got started in this book, because there was only room for them to make two short appearances (talking about the rocker turned bard).For the author, a good third-person multi-perspective novel can have all those characters, but only chooses a few to tell the story from.  This story could have been told from the perspective of 1) Major General Zachary Taylor, 2) The Emperor, 3) Kurt, 4) the Bard, 5) the princess of the wood elves, 6) a mental hospital patient.These are the perspectives that matter for this story to be told, and the other characters can be introduced and developed through those 6.  Nothing wrong with short cameos, but if I had to guess, I'd put it at over 30 different perspectives in this book, perhaps more.  The book began with one character introduction after another for what seemed like 100 pages.  Less enthusiastic readers will get discouraged at feeling the need to take notes about who is who.I love this book and I will continue to read the following books, but I offer this constructive criticism because I want this author to continue to be successful and do well.  Keep writing both Refuge and Exodus books!