books

[paperclippy]

Well, that was really kind of disappointing.

I mean, really. Three books worth of buildup of how are they going to get rid of the Red Ships, there's this big war, etc etc etc, and it gets resolved in two pages. Not only that, but in the beginning we had all these really in-depth things about which towns were attacked, how much progress they were making, etc. Then, in the end, they're like "and by the way, the Red Ships came inland too to Tradeford and killed a bunch of people, but then we woke up the Elderlings, and they ate them all, the end." I mean, I understand that by this point the author was probably sick of writing this book and just wanted it to end. But if that's what was going to happen maybe she should have cut out some of the earlier detail so that I wouldn't be expecting it in the ending.

Overall, I'd give it 3.5 stars out of five, I think. The pacing was just poor, especially that incredibly rushed ending. That and some of the characters were just really stupid/dense/rude/otherwise irritating with no good reason. Like Kettle. At least there was part in there where Fitz was like "Look old lady, you can't refuse to tell us everything you know, then get mad at us when we don't know it." I was like, duuuuuh, that's why she's been annoying me so much. I mean, being mysterious is all well and good in the beginning, but when people are getting hurt and dying because you're trying to be mysterious, it's time to just spill it.

Also, Fitz was damn annoying for a large portion of the third book.

That and they keep forgetting stuff from earlier. Like, the Fool has this whole prophecy thing about the Catalyst waking up the stone and turning something else to stone. They mention it once, and as soon as they see the Elderlings, I'm like, duh, obviously Fitz is going to have to use the wit to wake them up, because they're not really stones. But they NEVER mention that prophecy again, for the whole book. What the hell? I mean, other than foreshadowing with a hammer, it was kind of like, if you're going to do all this prophecy stuff, you should mention it more than once. I thought it especially stupid that Fitz, who has been theoretically trained to remember all this stuff and find the connections, is too stupid to see that he's supposed to be waking up these stone dragons.

Also, Will's ending was pretty disappointing. Regal's was just kind of thrown in in a sort of "My god I'm sick of writing this book, let's just kill this guy already." That and it kind of bothered me how lacking in motivation he was. Yeah, he's mostly his mother's son, but he was King Shrewd's son too (*ahem* shrewd, as in, not stupid).

And Starling annoyed me too.

In summary, the only characters who I ended up really liking were the Fool, Nighteyes, and Burrich.



I'm sort of reminded of when I tried to read Robert Jordan. I read "The Eye of the World" and really liked the plot/writing/etc, but hated every character with a passion. I couldn't bring myself to read the next book in the series because the characters just pissed me off so much.

I think it's typical to want to like the characters you're reading about, right? Or at least to have some sort of sympathy for them. I mean, we all are familiar with villains we love to hate. I think what makes a villain most interesting is if they have a damn good reason for being evil, which always creates lots of interesting angsty drama (okay, I will admit that the first thing that comes to mind here is Fushigi Yuugi :P).

Anyway . . . overall I'd have to say that lately I think I should stick to books that I find myself, because somehow books that everyone seems to love I end up not liking (like when I tried to read something by Bujold and couldn't get past chapter three).

Just for my own reference, here is a list of books I've read recently and how I rate them:

• Assassin Trilogy by Robin Hobb -- not bad, but far from my favorite
  
• Hidden Warrior by Lynn Flewelling -- love it! She'd better hurry up and write the final book in this trilogy.
  
• Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey -- love it! Okay, there are like three gratuitous sex scenes. But other than that, it was great.
  
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix -- good, not as good as it could have been. Harry dangerously close to becoming a character that annoys me.
  
• reread The Harp of Imach Thyssel by Patricia C. Wrede -- not as good as I remembered it being.
  

It's kind of sad that that's all I've read this summer. Then again, if you add up the numbers of pages . . . All together, that's 4179 pages, 1572 of which were in hardcover and 191 in a trade paperback. That's like reading Pride and Prejudice 12 times. Maybe I should start reading shorter books, then I'd get through more. I'm somewhat reminded of the summer I read ten David Eddings books in a row because they were all one story, and by the end I was soooo sick of them.