Sunday, September 19, 2010

C+ for "The Way of Shadows" by Brent Weeks

C+ for "The Way of Shadows" by Brent Weeks
A decent start, but nowhere near as high as GRRM, Rothfuss, or Abercrombie. Here are a few of the issues:

POV: some pov characters come in and then never have another one. It seems they are added just to beef up the story. They add little to the plot, and frankly I don't care about most of them. having a tighter story based on fewer central characters would have worked better, and random scenes from other povs could have been eliminated.

swearing: as another reviewer has pointed out, the swearing is at times a bit bizarre. The times it is used I'm often surprised, and other times when I could see someone swearing, they don't.

Plot: the plot seems to zig-zag and not in the way it should. There a bunch of small conflicts leading up to the end that don't seem to really do much for me. There are lots of mini climaxes and the story keeps on rolling. THere needed to much more foreshadowing of the main crux of the novel, and more dealing with it in the early chapters. Frankly by the time it comes around I was only reading to finish the book rather than out of interest.

Brent Weeks is a nice guy, and I was impressed by his online battle with Joe Abercrombie, but I'd recommend GRRM, Rothfuss, or Abercrombie first. Maybe the series improves after this, but this novel could have used another draft with more feedback from an editor.

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