11.5.05
Neither Crowned, nor Stellar
I've been thinking, and shotgunning mindless zombies leaves a reasonable amount of processing power for that... What to say about Kate Elliot's five-book series 'Crown of Stars'?
One word: mediocre. Sure, it's (quasi)historically realistic. It has well-developed characters. It won't bore you to death like Tad Williams' 'Memory, Sorrow, Thorn'. It won't make your eyes bleed by being unspeakably bad like Salvatore's or Dragonlance books. It won't do what Robert Jordan's I'll-write-12-books-or-bore-my-readers-to-death-trying (there'll be at least 13 books, and he will manage both, it seems) Wheel of Time does to people. But...
It's emotionally flat (so flat I have to re-read G.G. Kay's Fionavar Tapestry now). I found the plot somewhat predictable. It branches too much. Time-scale of the events varies too much - sometimes the events of a day or two are given the whole chapters, sometimes weeks (even months) pass in a paragraph or two. And, most importantly, it has no proper ending. This is the most disappointing feature, although you can see it coming before you're done with the first half of the fourth book. Out of sixteen (more or less) plot branches, only one gets a proper closure. The rest of them are left hanging, mentioned in passing, or forgotten completely. I would've forgiven everything if it weren't for this serious case of bad planning.
To conclude. Read if you have nothing better to do. Or want to write an ending yourself. If you do, be sure you get it published. Others will thank you for it.
One word: mediocre. Sure, it's (quasi)historically realistic. It has well-developed characters. It won't bore you to death like Tad Williams' 'Memory, Sorrow, Thorn'. It won't make your eyes bleed by being unspeakably bad like Salvatore's or Dragonlance books. It won't do what Robert Jordan's I'll-write-12-books-or-bore-my-readers-to-death-trying (there'll be at least 13 books, and he will manage both, it seems) Wheel of Time does to people. But...
It's emotionally flat (so flat I have to re-read G.G. Kay's Fionavar Tapestry now). I found the plot somewhat predictable. It branches too much. Time-scale of the events varies too much - sometimes the events of a day or two are given the whole chapters, sometimes weeks (even months) pass in a paragraph or two. And, most importantly, it has no proper ending. This is the most disappointing feature, although you can see it coming before you're done with the first half of the fourth book. Out of sixteen (more or less) plot branches, only one gets a proper closure. The rest of them are left hanging, mentioned in passing, or forgotten completely. I would've forgiven everything if it weren't for this serious case of bad planning.
To conclude. Read if you have nothing better to do. Or want to write an ending yourself. If you do, be sure you get it published. Others will thank you for it.
