This is one of those books that’s pretty frustrating to listen to/ read. imagine someone who is a decent DnD dungeon master and decides to write a novel, but has no other qualifications. that’s kind of what it sounded like. characters – they’re paper thin and have no agency. the author initially barely writes them with motivations, then intentionally removes it with ‘prophecy’, where the prophet is just standing proxy for the author’s plan. the romances are all cringe worthy, the characters’ behavior varies wildly scene to scene. like the ‘rogue with the heart of gold’ laughs at his old friend when he fails to light his king’s funeral pyre on the first try. it’s just pointlessly cruel and feels so out of place. there are countless examples of terrible dialogue, which just feels all wrong when it’s used for exposition or for showing action or ‘stage directions’. the POV characters for a chapter are really weakly done, where you’re not actually sure who you’re riding with. world building/plot – the world feels weirdly shallow, like so many people are doing things for the first time ever. like all the soldiers have never fought in a war before and are like, here’s a kooky new tactic i just thought up. the lords are all characterized as quasi immortal and power hungry, but over lifetimes of hundreds of years none ever tried to expand their power? then it’s like one of those click bait headlines, ‘try this one simple trick to take over the world’. i bet they feel dumb… the world borrows a lot from other sources. i get some Robert Jordan vibes, a little Brandon Sanderson, some tolkien, there are even hoards of darkspawn attacking through chasms that randomly pop up after being mentioned never in the first book or two. more complaining about the world – the magic system doesn’t make sense. one of the strongest wizards can barely lift a rope in the air, then weaker people are throwing fireballs and shooting lightning. there’s just no consistency. wizards are supposed to be a ruling class, but there’s no real distinction between them and regular people. when a powerful wizard is fleeing a city they deploy like a dozen non magical guards to each gate and act like that’s secure. remember when wizards can shoot lightning? wizards are out there demanding human sacrifice, and then non magic characters don’t act scared or treat them differently or are rude and antagonistic. the classism and society just doesn’t add up. very frustrating listen, because there are some components that could work if they were just written better. i found myself trying to rewrite sentences and dialogue to make the world more believable and characters more consistent. i won’t be continuing the series. the reader was fine. weird to me how he gave characters distinct accents when they lived like a day or two horse ride apart. like one lady randomly sounds Russian, others sound Scottish, others American, etc.
