Pawn of Prophecy

I was in the mood for classic high fantasy, and this book certainly captured that. It's a pretty straightforward quest story about a boy discovering his mysterious past and how the fate of the world hangs in the balance. It is very obviously the first of a trilogy, and as such primarily feels like exposition, but I think it will probably feel better as part of a whole rather than a stand alone. This book was written before 900 page fantasy novels were a norm, so I'll cut it some slack there. The series has been sitting on my shelf for a while in the “classics what I should have already read” section, so I'll likely finish it out.

It's been decades since I read this series. And I've been introduced to many, more recent, fantasy books. I have to say, this book stands up well today, not outdated or uninteresting to my tastes today. Good characters, the author doesn't veer off the storyline, and the pace keeps moving.

It's going back into my collection and not the repurpose box.

Really good writing, but too slow for my taste. This book is as slow as The Wheel of Time, but the plot seems to be weaker.

About half way into the book and here the following is all that happens:

A young boy goes out into a journey with his aunt and some old storyteller/vagrant guy, both of which may be more then what they appear to be. They are both fleeing from some people and looking for something as well. They are also keeping some secret about the boy's true identity.

It is implied that the people that are looking for the boy, which is a whole race of them (race as in Men of the West from LotR) are known to serve this dark lord of evil, but they live among everyone else as if that is not a problem.