Avid Books and TV

Derivative Fantasy, 2D Characters lacking agency

Revisado: 02-01-22

I had a tough time figuring how to rate this book, but finally settled at 2 stars, maybe 2.5 if that had been an option. You'd think from the basic premise a bestselling author would be pretty skilled at following through with it. The first half the book was pretty good, with lots of potential, but then he squandered that over the second half. I lost interest at several points and had to really push myself to actually finish the book. I've read a lot of SF and Fantasy over many years, and I can see how almost every element of the book, from characters, to plot to setting is borrowed (or stolen outright) from other (and often better) SFF novels. Without giving too many spoilers away, there are secondary character profiles pulled from Tad Williams MST trilogy, a setting crossed between Mark Lawrence's Book of the Ancestor/Book of the Ice and Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, and a plot that is your standard-fare hero's journey. A gifted orphan who's the only one that can save the world, that proceeds to gathers allies on a quest etc. Stuff you can find in countless other tales.

How it's all put together is at least marginally original, but most of the characters are extremely two-dimensional and only serve as crutches or opposition to the main characters. The villains lack all complexity. The main character starts off from a very intriguing point, but then becomes less 3 dimensional as the story progresses. Similarly, many of the plot points and character choices seemed forced to move the story in the direction the author wanted to take rather organic choices you'd think they'd make based on the story so far. If the characters actually had any agency of their own, it's hard to see several key plot points developing in the direction the author takes.

All that being said, there's enough of a foundation and story progression by the end, that it could get better and go in interesting directions, but I'm just not sure I care enough about the characters (or faith in the author) to want to find out what happens next.

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Interesting Idea, but poorly done

Revisado: 12-11-18

I almost gave up on this book a number of times but forced myself to finish it. I like the premise of the main protagonist being a dragon in human form, with a modern setting. However beyond that basic idea, there's little to like about this book. The writing is overly verbose, the characters are unlikable and mostly two-dimensional. I was not a fan of the main protagonist. He seemed pretty slow, dense and a predictable. He constantly blundered around, repeatedly charging into unknown situations without thought only to be surprised and/or out-witted, never learning from his mistakes and always needing someone or something else to save him. It was real slog to get through and I won't be reading any more from this author.

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The Best of the Series and a Satisfying Conclusion

Revisado: 09-14-18

While the books before this were solid, Barker steps it up to another level with the final book in the series. Much of epic fantasy written today is broad in scope, sweeping across different lands and settings, shifting from character to character. One of the things I particularly like about The Wounded Kingdom Series is the much more intimate, focused story we're given, with one of the most satisfying, emotional and, at times, tragic character arcs I've read in fantasy in recent years. In spirit it's reminiscent of Robin Hobb's original Farseer Trilogy, (though with different beats) and that has long been a favorite of mine. Like that story we get to see the maturation of the main protagonist from boy to young adult and finally a more experienced man. There's humor and heartache, mystery and suspense, heroism and tragedy, and very satisfying conclusion to the book and the trilogy. To say much more I think would spoil the story, but it's a world with characters I'd happily return to, and a series I'm sure I'll want to reread over and over again, which I think, is one of the best marks of a good story.

Joe Jameson as narrator was once again fantastic, with lots of range, and an emotive voice that added depth to the story and characters.

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Slow, Derivative, Predictable, Fraction of a Story

Revisado: 11-14-17

The opening chapters were well-written and had potential, but after that, the remainder of the book was slow, predictable and dragged out. The book ended without much of significance happening between then and the halfway point. It has the feel of being only a fragment of a full book, that got split up into multiple books with a lot of filler added in and scenes dragged out into chapters that a good writer could finish in a few sentences. If it's building to something that would be forgivable, but little of note actually happens throughout the 2nd half of the book, and the main character gets dumbed down to a plodding, unsympathetic brute in service to the plot. What's worse, is that he's really the only character with any real development at all, with most of the others lacking agency.

The story also had a very derivative feel to it, similar to Name of the Wind and Blood Song, but not done even half as well. Those books had good, complete opening stories, not just a fraction of one stretched out into a full book. The use of the framing story felt unnecessary, and at times clumsy and forced. I'm astonished at the number of good reviews this book has received, as there's really not much there to like about it. Slow, plodding story, unsympathetic characters and an unfinished plot.

The only redeeming quality is Simon Vance as narrator, and even he seems like a wrong choice for this kind of book. He has a wonderful voice, but his narration seemed far too refined for something taking place among a barbaric culture far from civilization.

I will not be getting the second book. The first is so predictable that I can already tell you what the big plot twist will be in the next one, and can expect it to be dragged out before it even gets to that point.

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Only about half a book stretched out

Revisado: 09-11-17

Not up to the standard I've come to expect from Correia for the MHI books. Over the last couple of books, I've felt that Pitt has become one of the least interesting characters, with Franks and Harbinger often stealing the show. This book is pretty much only Pitt, no Franks, and most of the other regulars only getting cameo appearances at best. It makes for a pretty dull story that doesn't even have as much interesting action as the other books. Half the book is just him flying around meeting people with a few token actions scenes to break up the monotony. I stuck with it because I thought it was building towards a climactic battle in towards the end. Instead we got a token battle, then some pretty predictable stuff happens, the real battle is glossed over in one line and you're left with a all too foreseeable cliffhanger.

It feels like most of the book could have been trimmed down into about a quarter of the length and what I presume will be in the next book combined with this one. Towards the end I was hoping he'd just kill off the main character and his tiresome "chosen-one" spiel, so we could get back to the more interesting guys.

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Needs a few more drafts to tighten it up

Revisado: 07-21-17

After all the glowing reviews, I was left wondering what everyone else saw in this book. One of the main characters wasn't really all the well-developed or believable. Too many detours into exposition instead of interlacing the info with the story as it progresses. And the plot needs more focus. By the end of the chapter, there's not really a whole lot of plot development or progression from where they were near the beginning of the book. You're left not knowing much more about the central themes, (or even what the central themes were), than when they began. There's also a underlying lack of gravity to many situations the characters find themselves in.

There's some potential here, but to me it seems like it needs a lot more work and revision before it should have been published. There's lots of dangling plot threads it seems like the characters just ignore or forget about after they happen, and no real driving central premise. It's all too vague.

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The Narrator makes this a real disappointment

Revisado: 11-24-16

I love long audiobooks that I can listen to for hours at a time while doing other things, and Memory, Sorrow and Thorn was one my all time favorites from when I was younger, so I was thrilled when this series was finally released on audiobook.

However I could not stand the voices the narrator uses for many of the characters. He gives some of them atrocious accents and others like the Sithi and trolls, he uses the same awful raspy, whispering voice that did not seem to fit at all. It was hard not to wince or groan every time I heard their voices. The result is that I couldn't listen to this book for more than a little while at a time, even though I still like the actual content. He basically ruined the whole audiobook series for me, and I'm extremely disappointed to see he's also going to be narrating the new books coming out in 2017. For those books I'll definitely be sticking to the print editions unless they find a better narrator.

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Nothing Special

Revisado: 10-04-15

So I guess there are couple of these series out now, with London Police dealing with the supernatural. Among this group London Falling had little to separate it from the crowd. None of the characters are especially likeable, and I found several just plain annoying and/or condescending. Nothing about the plot was particularly clever and, as far as magic systems and the supernatural goes, this was pretty poorly developed. There's some potential for this to improve in future books in the series, but I'm not sure I want to spend another credit on any more books in this series to find out.

I was also not a fan of Damian Lynch's narration. His voice was fine, and while the range between characters wasn't great, it was adequate. However, he continually has these long pauses between phrases and sentences. It's incredibly annoying to the point where I wanted to shout at him, "Get on with it!" It would go something like this: brief phrase, pause... end of phrase. Long pause... (like he's finding his spot in the text), Next sentence. Another pause, and so on. This book would probably be several hours shorter if that stuff was edited out. There were also several other parts where the narrator repeats himself because he lost his place so editing overall was pretty shoddy.

As for this London supernatural police sub-genre, I much preferred Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series.

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Best Served Cold with Pipe-Smoking and Magic

Revisado: 09-25-15

A shameless facsimile of Abercrombie's Best Served Cold, the plot centers on an bitter mercenary heroine left for dead out to for revenge on those who wronged her. She starts off as a sympathetic character but evolves into more of a villain as events unfold. Sound familiar? There are several other glaring parallels to Best Served Cold, but mentioning them would be spoilers.

Despite the glaring similarities, the setting, tone and writing style keep the plot interesting enough that I want to know what happens next. There are unique facets to the magic system (ie "devils" providing wishes/power) that diverge enough from BSC to allow the series room to build and/or diverge from Abercrombie's work. The book is written as the first in a series, instead of more stand alone novel so there's definitely room to grow.

One thing I did find annoying was the author's obsession with his characters' fixation on repeatedly smoking weed and detailed descriptions of the pipes they use and strains they smoke. I don't mind having a little of that in there to add some color, but it's definitely overdone in this book and gets tiresome after reading yet another description of a different custom pipe and how it affects the flavor of whatever obscure fictional strain of weed they're smoking now.

So some good, some bad, but with room to improve in future books.

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Disappointing, Not Enough Substance to Plot

Revisado: 08-31-15

Like others have mentioned, William Dufris was excellent in the parts he narrated, and they should have just stuck with him for the whole book. Like the last book (Human Division) this one is broken up into (sometimes only loosely) connected stories from different characters points of view. While that worked well in Human Division, the effect in this book is to make the story feel disjointed, with lots of fluff and not enough substance to the plot or characters. You only get to see some of the better known characters from previous books for short periods of time, with long diversions that only semi-advance the plot.

I would have much rather enjoyed a more focused novel, with more focus on the central characters (Wilson and Schmidt) from the last book. The first part of the story with Raif was entertaining, but he's only on the peripherary for the rest of the book. As for plot, there's only a few parts of real substance while other parts feel like they're only put in there to add some much needed length to the story. It definitely felt like it could have used more polishing and substance to it. A disappointing conclusion to some of the ongoing storylines of the last several books.

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