Tuesday, February 17, 2004
The Windsingers, The Limbreth Gate, and The Luck of the Wheels by Megan Lindholm.
Yes, I have become a lazy git already and am hence reviewing three books at once. In my defense they are the last three books of a quartet and all relatively small at under 400 pages, and I've been sick.
Enough of excuses.
For a quartet all these books have a very stand-aloneish feel. The main characters stay the same, and I supppose if you read them out of order you would miss some of the character development, but essentially the stories are completely independent.
I am not going to bother with a run down of the storylines, the blurbs at the back of the book invariably do a much superior job. What I do want to concentrate on is my overall impressions.
I found myself enjoying the books more as I went on, and they all finished in a much more satisfactory manner than did number one. The Luck of The Wheels actually kept me up past midnight last night to get it finished. The characters become more comfortable as the story goes along, but I cant help feeling that the author has failed slightly here when it took so long before I felt a connection with the characters. The dyanmic between the two characters, Ki and Vandien, never seems real. I cared about them as individuals, but the supposed bond between them never felt right. The bond was meant to be different, they love each other, but keep no bonds and often travel separately for months. I think it was an effort to prevent cliches, but I dont think it worked.
The writing is consistently good. Very good. Outstanding even. The series is worth it just for this. I keep the slightly disappointed feel of finishing a group of good books that could have been great. Definitely worth checking out, especially if you can get your hands on the entire series.
Enough of excuses.
For a quartet all these books have a very stand-aloneish feel. The main characters stay the same, and I supppose if you read them out of order you would miss some of the character development, but essentially the stories are completely independent.
I am not going to bother with a run down of the storylines, the blurbs at the back of the book invariably do a much superior job. What I do want to concentrate on is my overall impressions.
I found myself enjoying the books more as I went on, and they all finished in a much more satisfactory manner than did number one. The Luck of The Wheels actually kept me up past midnight last night to get it finished. The characters become more comfortable as the story goes along, but I cant help feeling that the author has failed slightly here when it took so long before I felt a connection with the characters. The dyanmic between the two characters, Ki and Vandien, never seems real. I cared about them as individuals, but the supposed bond between them never felt right. The bond was meant to be different, they love each other, but keep no bonds and often travel separately for months. I think it was an effort to prevent cliches, but I dont think it worked.
The writing is consistently good. Very good. Outstanding even. The series is worth it just for this. I keep the slightly disappointed feel of finishing a group of good books that could have been great. Definitely worth checking out, especially if you can get your hands on the entire series.
