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Greetings, readers!
As you may recall, I gave the first book review of the year just a few days ago.
I am pleased to report that I have now finished the series, and enjoyed them. As a reminder, the series is the “Riyria Revelations” by Michael J. Sullivan.
As a minor note: Each of the three “books” actually contains two novels. (In terms of length: Combined, each “set of two” is nowhere near as long as a usual Brandon Sanderson novel, but that may not be saying much.)
But onto the review part.
Pros: 1) The characters remain fun to read. The different characters have noticeably different speaking styles, and the banter is droll. 2) The writing style noticeably improves. Whereas the first part of the first book read more like somebody’s D&D adventure, the later books feel more coherent and well written. Furthermore, some of the plot-twists become a bit less predictable. (Some remain fairly obvious, but others are better done.) Furthermore, the author does a reasonable job for some of the twists and surprises of “show, don’t tell”.
Cons: 1) Some of the plot-twists feel as though they were not initially supposed to be there. A term that is relevant is the idea of “retcon“. Granted, it may not be retcon, as some cases simply did not provide the vital piece of information. However, it still felt that way. 2) Some of the writing jerks about. Time-frames in particular are not entirely clear.
Overall, I enjoyed the series, and will likely invest in the prequels (which were written after the originals series) at some point.
Happy Sunday.