This book series focuses on the ranger Owen and the mage Zara. They live in Tarsynium, a country under the Arc of Radiance that keeps demons out. But demons are starting to get in.
*****SPOILERS*****
There were positives that were simply
spectacular.
Two
events were so unfair and so unjust that I had to stop reading for a few days
because I was fuming. (The pair were exiled to keep the peace; Owen potentially
being executed for ‘abandoning his post’.) To have such a visceral reaction was
a great achievement, but for it to change my behaviour? That took real talents
on the author’s part.
I
usually dislike reading war scenes being as they can be repetitive. Physical
fight scenes also fall victim to this. But each fight/war scene was engaging
and not boring. Hats off to the author.
In
the end, everyone knew Owen and Zara were going off to their death. This
happens a lot in fiction and it’s accompanied by the characters staying alive
by some twist. It’s what’s expected. So when this doesn’t happen with Owen and
Zara, when they don’t survive in order to save everyone else, it hits hard. To
have both main characters die is bad enough, but to die when you explicitly
expect them both to live? That was an unexpected twist that was a stroke of
genius.
Owen
and Zara’s interactions are initially frosty. They warm up in a steady,
well-managed progression. So whilst not ‘spectacular’, this is another
indication of the author’s talent.
The mages and rangers have a rivalry
and a lack of trust between them. Mages advance learning and society whilst
rangers protect the country’s borders. Their roles are neither the same, nor do
their roles contradict each other. Thus there seems to be no reason to be
rivals or to lack trust. This concept is only touched upon in the first book
(and even then only lightly). So between the no reason and the barely there
nature, it was so bizarre to include this rivalry.
The way the author wrote wasn’t all
that great.
Books being in first person sometimes
brings advantages over doing so in third person. This series was not one of these
instances. Being in the character’s head (rather than just watching them)
should bring more insight and information. Yet in this series, all the
information the readers got wasn’t deeper than what third person would allow.
So being written in first person didn’t add anything to the story.
Later in the series, we get chapters
from the perspectives of Elias and Talon. But these are written in third
person! From a literary perspective, they were better than the first person
perspectives from Owen and Zara. But to have both first and third person
perspectives in the same book is utter madness! Sometimes it’s fine (think a
frame story, where the frame is third person but then the stories within are in
first person because that’s how a person tells a story of themselves to
others.) But this certainly wasn’t the case here.
They were written in the present
tense! I was honestly baffled by this. I suppose one could argue the present
tense makes the reader feel more in the moment, but it’s hard to be in the
moment when each verb threw me for being a different tense than expected. Even
though there’s nothing wrong with writing in the present tense per se, it
definitely negatively impacted my quality of reading.
Often, when the author looks back at a
few days, they talk about it having been weeks. The same thing happens with
extending weeks to months. The activities that happen don’t match up period of
times given to them at a later date.
The mages only used fire for their
attacks (bar particular exceptions in particular situations).
This got repetitive, especially with
Zara. Maybe it was just her signature move? But mage fire was how all the mages
fought. Some extra creativity would have been positive from two angles:
enjoyment and consistency. As a reader, it would have been more enjoyable to see more creativity.
The consistency element is more
important from the perspective of a critique. The reader is reminded often that
mages spent a lot of time studying, which means a mage should have a wide
variety of knowledge, including attacks. A lack of variety goes in the face of,
and is inconsistent with, all that studying.
The behaviour was sometimes off.
A few of the female characters had
outbursts. They fit with neither the characters nor the situations. They were
so out of place that their reasoning can’t be fathomed. (Well, the reasoning
for the plot is clear, but as characters are the vectors of the plot then plot
points need to fit their characters. Which these outbursts did not.) So this is
bad enough. But to give this weird behaviour to the female characters only? Was
this just unlucky or is this the result of a negative bias towards women?
In the second book, a Warden decides
to put Owen on trial for abandoning his post. Now, she knew he’d just been to a
secret meeting of mages. That’s a pretty big deal. Considering Owen’s post is
to protect Tarsynium, the mages would’ve only invited him to their meeting if
it was about Tarsynium’s meeting, hence going to the meeting fulfils his post
and thus cannot be him abandoning his post.
Zara learns the language of the
wastelanders, the people that live outside the Arc of Radiance. This was problematic.
She complains about the complexities
of several bits of grammar. She gives the same exact lecture in her head at
least twice. If the lecture doesn’t change in substance (what’s complained
about) or situation (who gets complained to), then how the information’s
repeated shouldn’t be repeated in the exact same way. It would have been easy
enough for the essence of the complaint can be repeated without actually
repeating what’s been written already.
Zara says that the wastelander’s
language must have diverged from hers. This is a rather large assumption
without a shred of evidence. Yes, being next to Tarsynium would imply the
people of the wastelands and Tarsynium are from the stock and, as such, so is
their language. But many languages of different origins can easily coexist in
the same place. Plus it’s been a thousand years since the Arc of Radiance went
up: this is plenty of time from migration so these wastelanders (and their language)
may be from a different part of the planet.
Finally, let’s consider the
possibility that Zara’s language and the wastelanders’ language does originate
from a recent common ancestor. Now, languages are always evolving. Yet a
thousand years isn’t enough time for diverged languages to have no recognition
between them. (Although a bit difficult at first, we can understand English
written a thousand years ago.) Within this time, they’d still be some mutual
intelligibility (understood by one another). Zara having no recognition of the
wastelander’s language conclusively proves they’re not from the same language.
This review was a bit different from
the ones I usually do.
When I read something, the first time
is always for entertainment. I won’t even entertain the concept of reviewing a
book on the first time around because it ruins the experience.
This book series, however, had me in a
bit of a bind. I had stuff I wanted to say but I didn’t want to read it again.
(It was a slog.) So I didn’t note down any incorrect grammar or punctuation. I
didn’t note down any of the beautiful descriptions.
Yet clearly this series made an
impression on me. Definitely worth my while.
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