Jonathan Palfrey
I tried this as my first experiment with Brandon Sanderson, having read nothing of his before, and I found it readable and mildly entertaining, but far too long, and rather cold throughout. On finishing it, I don’t feel motivated to read the sequels.
In fantasy, I like a hard magic system, which functions according to known rules and limitations; and here we have a hard magic system. However, this magic system has little in common with traditional magic: it doesn’t feel like magic as I know it from other stories. It seems more related to superhero stories from 20th century comics, in which particular people have special powers. I repeat: there is something cold about it.
On first reading, the story is not bad, but I have some problems with it.
1. I don’t believe the scenario. The author just asserts it without doing anything to make me believe in it. What is the Deepness? How did the Ruler come to be the Ruler? After reading through the whole over-long book, I still don’t know, and I don’t really care. To hell with it. I can go away and read something else.
2. Characterization is good enough, it’s not bad, and yet it’s fairly superficial. I don’t care very much about any of these people. I quite like Vin, the heroine, but even she isn’t enough to persuade me to read more books in the series. The whole situation strikes me as unreal.
3. The story drags. I plodded through it reluctantly, wishing for it to end sooner. It’s an unusually long novel, but I have a few other novels in my collection of similar length, and they don’t drag quite so much. A novel shouldn’t normally be this long, it’s an excessive length, but occasionally a novel may have enough story in it to justify the length. This one hasn’t. I kept wishing for it to get to the point and finish. Thank God it’s over at last.
4. As a man, I have no claim to be a feminist, but I suspect that the last sentence of this novel will not appeal to feminists. If you read through all the pages, you’ll get there in the end.
I tried this as my first experiment with Brandon Sanderson, having read nothing of his before, and I found it readable and mildly entertaining, but far too long, and rather cold throughout. On finishing it, I don’t feel motivated to read the sequels.
In fantasy, I like a hard magic system, which functions according to known rules and limitations; and here we have a hard magic system. However, this magic system has little in common with traditional magic: it doesn’t feel like magic as I know it from other stories. It seems more related to superhero stories from 20th century comics, in which particular people have special powers. I repeat: there is something cold about it.
On first reading, the story is not bad, but I have some problems with it.
1. I don’t believe the scenario. The author just asserts it without doing anything to make me believe in it. What is the Deepness? How did the Ruler come to be the Ruler? After reading through the whole over-long book, I still don’t know, and I don’t really care. To hell with it. I can go away and read something else.
2. Characterization is good enough, it’s not bad, and yet it’s fairly superficial. I don’t care very much about any of these people. I quite like Vin, the heroine, but even she isn’t enough to persuade me to read more books in the series. The whole situation strikes me as unreal.
3. The story drags. I plodded through it reluctantly, wishing for it to end sooner. It’s an unusually long novel, but I have a few other novels in my collection of similar length, and they don’t drag quite so much. A novel shouldn’t normally be this long, it’s an excessive length, but occasionally a novel may have enough story in it to justify the length. This one hasn’t. I kept wishing for it to get to the point and finish. Thank God it’s over at last.
4. As a man, I have no claim to be a feminist, but I suspect that the last sentence of this novel will not appeal to feminists. If you read through all the pages, you’ll get there in the end.