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“It is a shame that so few have the time or inclination for scholarship these days. There is much entertainment to be afforded in perusing the mistakes of our forebears.”
“It is a shame that so few have the time or inclination for scholarship these days. There is much entertainment to be afforded in perusing the mistakes of our forebears.”
Favorite book of the month: Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
Honorable Mentions: Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins, Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith
Longest in pages: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
Total books ingested: 18
Re-reads/listens: 1
Total books read: 18
Total pages read: 5,765
Average pages per book: 320
Average pages per day: 185
Scores:
1: 1
2: 1
3: 11
4: 5
5: 0
Did not finish: 2
Average: 3.11
Reviews Written/Published: 5 (Wow, I really, really need to step this up)
May wasn't a terrible month, though much of my reading was continuing series I'd already started (hello Morganville Vampires and The Dresden Files). I am continuing to remain behind (and to fall further behind, apparently) on my reading challenge, and I've also been horrible about updating things here (you may have noticed?); currently trying to play "spread out the time in a rational way" and right now my life includes both actually being social and playing World of Warcraft.
Blame my friends, guys, for both of these terrible time sinks. ;)
No, honestly, I've just been lazy about things. I have started reviews for what I thought was a good dozen but which actually counting my drafts folder here informs me is 48 books; I'm not finishing them for reasons I can't quite explain. I'll need to set myself up a nice day at home with a pot of tea and no distractions and see what I can't manage to knock out.
I also need to actually finish some of the ridiculous number of audiobooks I have started. I have not had any audiobooks listed in my wrap-up for months, but I am listening; I just keep stopping partway through and starting something else. My reading life is a curious thing, I swear.
How did everyone else's May reading go? Do you even remember at this point? Any curious trends you noted? How is June holding up for you?
The scene in the library here is always one of my favorites upon re-reading. Why yes, he is busy. Writing. Nothing at all to see here; move along.
Most romantic courtship.
Spoiler Rating: High
So, Ashers,
Because I know you thick-in-the-midst-of-doctoral-exams folk have nothing to do but stare blankly out your windows all day, allow me to rant to you about a book that started off so promisingly, and left me a puddle of exasperation and disappointment: Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith.
It begins in a cold and shabby tower room, where young Countess Meliara swears to her dying father that she and her brother will defend their people from the growing greed of the king. That promise leads them into a war for which they are ill-prepared, a war that threatens the homes and lives of the very people they are trying to protect.
But war is simple compared to what follows, when the bloody fighting is done and a fragile peace is at hand. Although she wants to turn her back on politics and the crown, Meliara is summoned to the royal palace. There, she soon discovers, friends and enemies look alike, and intrigue fills the dance halls and the drawing rooms. If she is to survive, Meliara must learn a whole new way of fighting–with wit and words and secret alliances. In war, at least, she knew whom she could trust. Now she can trust no one.
My edition is the 2002 revised reprint, which contains the two original novels (Crown Duel and Court Duel) in a single binding, renamed Part One and Part Two. As you might suspect, Part One is the bloody-fighting half, and Part Two the court-intrigue half.
The Heroine, Mel
You’re as big a fan as I am of lady warriors who are more serious about their warrioring than making sure they look good in their armor, and allow me to assure you that Mel is exactly that type. Even though, admittedly, she’s not a good fighter.
She was raised in a crumbling castle by an absent father bent on avenging his wife’s murder (at the hands of King Galdran, who also happens to be taxing his people to death in order to raise an enormous army–as bad kings are wont to do), and so she grew up barefoot and wild, with war hanging over her head. To quote her brother:
She’s fierce, determined, and a compelling combination of bloodthirsty and innocent that’s totally sucked me in. Not to mention brave and self-sacrificing:
She’s also refreshingly honest about her own shortcomings, such as her ignorance about politics, she takes no credit for the good that her actions/mistakes lead to, and doesn’t accept flattery:
A realistic approach to her shortcomings isn’t the only thing I like about her character. Later, after a jealous lady intentionally gets Mel vomiting-drunk at a party (to make a fool of her, of course), Mel reacts thusly:
Instead of snubbing Tamara (thereby ruining Tamara’s prospects at court, somehow), Mel devises a more humane and diplomatic way of dealing with the other girl. Meanwhile, I’m giving Mel two thumbs up for her attitude and compassion, which is both endearing and realistically portrayed.
The Sexy Dude, the Marquis of Shevraeth
The Marquis of Shevraeth is a gentleman known for his taste in fine clothes and racehorses, but also possesses quite a knack for warfare.
Oh my goodness, Ashers, you are going to be so incredibly excited about Shevraeth.
Court Customs in Part Two
The customs of the court are interesting, too–especially the use of hand-held fans. King Galdran would rather kill people than allow them to speak freely, so his courtiers found a new way to communicate; each flick, flutter, and minute gesture of the fans has a meaning. Mel initially dismisses it as just a means of flirting, but her brother’s fiancee corrects her:
So neat.
But unfortunately, this is where things go south.
High on my list of Grievous Annoyances in fantasy novels is the outrageously-ambiguous historical time period. Yes, of course, fantasy authors have the freedom to create their cultures as they will–but that doesn’t stop my knuckles from going white when something glaringly illogical pops up.
Now, Crown Duel takes place in a world somewhat parallel to ours (as in parallel universes, I think). Early in the book, the reader is informed that horses and chocolate had been imported to this world from another one–so we know there is some degree of interaction between worlds.
This could explain the ambiguity that bothered me so much; perhaps a lot more than just horses and chocolate were imported, and those imports were adopted by the native societies before they would have been able to develop them on their own. That’s a really neat concept, and if handled correctly would add a lot of awesome depth to the cultures/world/story. (If you’ve read a book that explored that idea at all, let me know and I’ll add it to my to-read list!)
However, because this information is presented in a single throw-away sentence and never mentioned again, that awesome depth doesn’t exist in Crown Duel. Instead, the reader is shown a culture that’s an odd conglomeration of medieval Europe, Renaissance Europe, and Regency England–a time period that spans, oh, more than a thousand years.
The illogical details start even before the plot does. We’re given a brief run-down of the world and its history, which includes this bit of information:
So we’re to believe that “several generations ago” (which reads to me as between, say, 150 to 300 years ago), these sprawling, complex, Renaissance-European-ish societies still hadn’t developed range weapons beyond hand-thrown rocks and spears? Really? What else did they fail to invent? Wheels?
I understand wanting a legitimate reason to have range weapons banned from war. I’m not sure why it’s necessary in this particular book (maybe because swords are sexy?), but I’m sure there are stories out there that, for plot reasons, cannot contain range or siege weapons.
Legitimate, historically-accurate reasons for such bans do exist, though, and they’re so much more interesting than “these people somehow never invented complex range weapons, and were terrified of them when they finally started using them.”
Here’s an example: Pope Innocent II banned the use of hand-held range weapons in the early 12th century (in part) because they threatened to upend social order/hierarchy. A crossbow in the hands of a peasant could kill an armored knight–and a lower-born man who scrounged up an army of peasants wielding crossbows could potentially force his way into the highest rings of society. If there’s one thing royalty and the papacy were keen on, it was making sure that the lower-born didn’t start getting ambitious.
That’s pretty awesome.
So what technology does this kingdom boast? Certainly not gunpowder or oil lamps. They use swords for war and magician-made glowglobes for lighting–though glowglobes as streetlamps are limited to specific areas in the capital city. (And don’t ask me about any other magically-made objects, because there don’t appear to be any. Which makes those glowglobes quite conspicuous, I must say.)
Books are common enough to be collected by moderately well-off families. In Part Two, Mel began rebuilding her own family’s library:
Not only is she rebuilding the library, she’s ordering her new books through the mail; most of those fifty books are historical and political in nature, and have been collected in approximately six months. We’re not told exactly how long the whole process takes, but it’s strongly implied that Mel receives her books within a couple weeks of ordering them. This alone suggests the existence of the printing press.
However, that assumption is contradicted by the omnipresence of scribes, which she’d considered hiring instead of buying books directly from the bookseller, and which she later refers to as the ones who will copy her own memoirs for future generations. Book-copying scribes were much less common in our world after the invention of the printing press. Scribes suggest medieval, printing press suggests Renaissance.
But these are just annoying details, ultimately. I have more important things to complain about.
Unrealistically Dumb Characters
First let me say that the book’s intended audience is unclear. Shevraeth is (I think?) somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, so he’s an adult. Mel has just reached “marriageable age,” so depending on the approximate time period (which is also unclear), she’s about sixteen. However. Due to the “complexity” (those are sarcasm-quotes) of the events in the story, and certain characters’ cognitive abilities/emotional maturity/grasp of reality, I wonder if it’s actually intended for readers around the ages of, say, eight to twelve.
For example:
Part One’s plot revolves around Mel’s attempt to realize her dead father’s dream of ousting the king. Mel and Bran don’t particularly want to rule the country, but they think they’d do a better job of it than wicked King Galdran. (I’m not sure why they think this about themselves, and I’m not really sure why Galdran is so wicked in the first place. Except that he taxes his people and has a big army, and might have been involved in their mother’s death. Um.)
Early in the book, Mel is captured (by Shevraeth) and dragged before the king, who announces that if her brother doesn’t surrender, she’ll be tortured and executed. Mel escapes the king’s dungeon (with Shevraeth’s help), and the king immediately sends his people to hunt her down because, you know, a high-profile prisoner of war somehow escaped his inescapable prison. (Meanwhile, Bran surrenders to the king.) Mel leads her pursuers on quite a chase through the countryside, taking time to make a fool out one of the king’s best men.
And then, when Mel and Bran are safely tucked away in Shevraeth’s family home, Mel asks the dumbest of all the questions:
That’s right. She doesn’t understand why King Galdran can’t just leave her and Bran alone. The girl who led an army against him, escaped his dungeon hours before her scheduled public execution, and who publicly proved him and his lackeys incompetent.
Of course he isn’t going to leave them alone. What is she thinking?
And her brother Bran’s a doofus whose scenes are painful to read.
Even Shevraeth–wonderful, sexy Shevraeth–comes up with a terrible idea about how to kidnap the king. It involves asking the king to step away from his massive army to converse privately with Shevraeth, Mel, and Bran (you know, the three people who have conspired to dethrone him), grabbing him once they’re at a slight distance from his guards, and making a run for it. They all nod seriously about it, and then go to carry it out.
I just…I can’t.
Part One’s Infuriating Climax
Of course the kidnapping doesn’t go as planned (it was too dumb to succeed), leading to a brief skirmish between the good guys, the king, and the king’s soldiers. Mel, who’s dismal with a sword, manages to block one swing from the king before (the Marquis of) Shevraeth comes between them. The good guys are losing when:
Mel is knocked out. After two pages of skirmishing, Mel is knocked out.
When she wakes up, some time has passed; she’s tucked safe in bed and Bran cheerfully tells her that just as the good guys were about to lose the skirmish, the magical Hill Folk (whom we’ve never even seen before, and know almost nothing about) had appeared out of nowhere and used their magic to save the day. Oh, and Shevraeth killed the king.
That’s right. The good guys win via the deus-ex-machina magical Hill Folk, but Mel and the readers don’t see it happen.
Ashers, this is the first time I’ve ever been infuriated when the good guys won.
Part Two’s Plot Issues
Part Two has an unpromising start: six months after the king was killed at the end of Part One, we find that Mel has retreated to her castle in the mountains to educate herself on politics and stuff, and that Shevraeth hasn’t yet been crowned king.
Yeah. Six months later, the army has been disbanded and there’s no new monarch. Also no further uprisings, civil war, banditry at the hands of thousands of now-jobless soldiers, or invasion by greedy neighboring kingdoms.
Shevraeth’s parents, an elderly prince and princess, have stepped in and are running the government while they…smooth the way for Shevraeth to become king, I guess? And somehow this smoothing-the-way involves a “Letter of Regard” from some random queen in some random foreign country, in which she states she feels Shevraeth’s family has the best claim on the throne. And somehow this foreign queen’s opinion negates King Galdran’s sister’s legal claim on the throne–even though females have equal inheritance rights, and Galdran had no closer blood relative, and therefore his sister does have a legitimate legal claim.
I am so confused.
Anyway, Mel hasn’t learned yet to keep her nose out of crown business, and frets that Galdran’s sister (whom she knows nothing about, but whom everyone else knows is Bad News) might actually have what it takes to make a better ruler than Shevraeth. She expresses her concern to a servant/friend, who suggests that Mel go to court to find out.
And so begin Mel’s adventures in court–which consist almost strictly of learning court manners, floundering into awkward social situations, raging and blushing around Shevraeth, and conducting an intimate correspondence with an anonymous person (surprise: it’s Shevraeth!) whom she comes to consider an adviser and friend.
But there are no real conflicts, no real stakes, no real plot. At least, not until it’s almost over, at which point we’re treated to a sudden escalation of danger followed by a too-brief struggle. And, yes, Mel was present and conscious this time–but, like the climax to Part One, it was actually the magical Hill People, not Mel or any of her lot, who deus-ex-machinaed out of nowhere and saved the day.
If the Hill People had been developed at all, either as a group or even in the form of a single individual whom Mel befriends, this might not bother me so much. But no. Everything the reader learns about the Hill People over the course of the book can be summed up in a single sentence: they are a reclusive, magical race of people who look like and commune with trees, and who give humans magical “Fire Sticks” to burn so humans don’t have to cut trees down for fuel.
That’s it. We don’t even see what they look like in Part One; in Part Two, we see them for approximately one page.
As for the whole “friends will turn out to be enemies” warning from the book’s synopsis? That never happened.
This confused me to no end, because I was waiting for some exciting betrayal, and thought I knew who it’d be: Mel’s brother’s future wife. And that betrayal even seems to have taken place: Mel told her future sister-in-law the secret of how to kill the magical Hill Folk, and the villain (who wants to export the Hill People’s precious trees, and needs to kill them off to do so) clearly wound up with that secret knowledge. How did the villain learn it, if not through Mel’s sister-in-law?
But no. The book reassures us that the sister-in-law is pure of heart, and we never learn how the villain learned to kill the Hill Folk.
Here I sit, cheated of all the betrayals and revelations promised me.
How am I feeling about this book? Conflicted. There were some good elements individually, but the plot/climax/setting issues were overwhelming. And then there’s Shevraeth, oh my goodness.
There is a prequel featuring a younger Shevraeth as its protagonist: A Stranger to Command. (Hilariously, the book was published under an imprint called YA Angst.) There’s a decent chance I’ll read it, but it won’t be near the top of my reading list anytime soon.
I am, etc.,
Liam
Okay, so finally, here's my review for this one. I honestly had no idea what to say about it. I fluctuated between thinking, "Ehh, it's a harmless, somewhat boring four stars," and "It's not terrible, probably a three," and "I kind of don't like it, you know? Maybe a two," and "Ugh. Grow up already, characters! Get a move on, plot! I didn't sign up for five hundred pages of irritating nothing! One star!"
In the end, I decided that while thinking about this book puts a very intense bad taste in my mouth, it wasn't horribly offensive and I didn't hate it. I just didn't have the energy to hate it - I've got better stuff to waste my hate on.
I'm going to start out by describing the main character, whose name bounced confusingly between Shev, Danric, Shevraeth, and Vidanric depending on who was talking to him at the time. I'll call him Shev for the moment, because it's the easiest to type.
He's a saint. He's an angelic, generous, polite, heroic, intelligent, dedicated, beautiful, sweet, thoughtful, selfless, brave pacifist who managed to go to a military school and spend hours every day learning the art of killing, and not realize that he'd have to use his training to kill people someday. I'm serious though, this guy was designed to be a perfect hero, with a heart of gold, a poker face like a rock, and enough skill with his sword to defeat Miyamoto Musashi in three seconds or less.The only "bad" thing he did in the whole book was give an obnoxious thirteen-year-old a single lash with a wand.
Okay, let me explain this. I hate people who hit kids. I hate seeing physical pain used as a punishment against anyone, but against kids in particular. You do not hit kids if you want to be in my good books, right? Right.
But this kid deserved it. See, he was thirteen, and he was at a military school. When you're in your teens and in a place like that, you're expected to be old and tough enough to take simple orders like, say, wash the dishes, fall back, take this scouting party and lead it around to the west, etc. This kid deliberately talked back to any orders that Shev, as the poor misunderstood foreigner, gave him. He undermined all of Shev's work and basically tried to make his life a living hell. If I'd been in a position of power at that school, I'd have had that thirteen-year-old expelled and sent home in disgrace for what he did, but his only punishment was actually a single stroke from the wand Shev carried at his belt.
It was a bendy, slender wooden wand, okay? It probably left a bit of a red mark, and that's it. The kid would've been fine in twenty-four hours. But Shev wouldn't shut up about it. He kept reliving the scene in his head and ranting about it and bemoaning how horrible he was, which essentially meant that I had to reread the scene five or six times over twenty or thirty pages.
I wanted to barge into Shev's tent and smack him upside the head for being so whiny.
But okay, I'm moving on to the next thing that annoyed me. Add insta-love to the list.
The girl's name was Senelac. I actually liked her at the beginning of the book, I thought she had the potential to be awesome. She was the tough no-nonsense girl who loves horses. Cliché, but whatever, she didn't have all that dialogue that I despise from "women of power".
Later in the book, she and Shev both suddenly become fascinated with each other. At the same time. They've known each other for over a year at this point, but suddenly each finds the other irresistible. (Blegh.) And this was two or three hundred pages into the book, just when I'd happily decided that there would be no romance at all in it.
Senelac becomes a witch of the highest degree. She doesn't want to be seen with Shev even though they're dating. She actually takes him down little secret back roads to get to each place they intend to hang out, and if a friend sees them together at a bakery or something, she says she'll never take Shev there again.
Uh, why? No, nevermind. Don't try to understand the way the witch's mind works.
Any time Shev accidentally starts telling a story of his childhood or comparing something he sees to something he knew in his homeland, Senelac snarls at him and shuts him up. She doesn't want to hear about his homeland - she doesn't even bother to remember its name - because someday, Shev will go back to it and leave her here. Boo-hoo. So she pointedly avoids talking to Shev about anything that isn't military-related. Horses, strategy, secret codes, etc. But she doesn't want to know anything about him as a person, even though she's dating him and she "loves" him. She's fascinated by his foreign accent and gestures and habits, but she won't allow him to talk or even think about anything that's important to him.
She ignores him in public and turns her back to him and snaps at him when he tries to talk to her, and then afterward when they're alone, she threatens to leave him for just trying to talk to her in public. She gets smug when Shev avoids talking about his homeland, and actually thinks, "I've trained him well." And when he stops talking suddenly and looks pained, she decides that he stopped himself from saying something about his homeland, which irritates her. She actually has the gall to be annoyed when he's causing himself emotional pain even though that's what she wants him to do.
And then, as the crowning glory to their relationship, Senelac eventually becomes aware that there's another guy interested in her. She stops going out with Shev, who feels neglected and betrayed and sad. He understands that she's hanging out with this other guy, so he avoids her. (He was avoiding her in public anyway, so I don't know how she sees this as being different.) Senelac hunts him down one day, demands to know what he's doing, and confesses that she wants Shev to go pick a fight with the other guy. She wants Shev to "be the bad guy" so that she can dump him without feeling bad about it, and go marry the other guy in peace. And yes, she says all this to his face.
Is she the most horrible witch ever yet? I swear, every time I saw her name written down in the second half of the book I wanted to throw it at the wall.
Ahem. All right, next item on the list - the pacing. The book was boooooooooooooooring. Mostly it was just repeating the cycle of the same forty pages over and over again. Shev wakes up. He trains. He sends or receives a letter. He goes to talk to the king. They have the same conversation they've already had ten times before, but this time it's supposed to be enlightening. Shev leads or participates in a war game of some sort. Shev sends or receives another letter. Repeat cycle.
I swear, nothing happened in the entire book! Oh, and I have the same problem with this book that I did with Anne of Windy Poplars. It was irritating seeing the flow of the book constantly interrupted by convenient letters. I mean, half the time I wasn't actually reading about Shev doing his training, I was reading about him telling someone else about him doing his training. It was like the author couldn't quite decide whether to put the book in first-person or third-person mode, so she went halfway. And just so that you wouldn't lose track of what was happening in Shev's homeland, his parents and childhood friend sent him constant news.
Problem was, the news never updated anything. Evil king killing people, got it. Lots of pretty girls fluttering around at court, got it. You must be careful, Shev, got it. Your parents are being very cautious, Shev, got it. Your childhood friend is also keeping his head down, Shev, got it.
Ugh. I'd had enough after the first two or three letters. They never said anything new. And worse, a couple of times I was actually given the POV of somebody in Shev's homeland for no reason. I mean. why didn't they just write another letter to tell me what happened? Why did I actually have to read about that one from the guy's POV?
Anyway, moving on again. Is this review getting long? I think it is. I'll shut up pretty soon here, after I give you some quotes and such.
He smelled the sharp sweat of older boys.
What, do older boys stink more? You're already like Shev. You don't stink more when you're seventeen than when you're fifteen.
This was Shevraeth's first experience of the ancient Marloven travel bread, a recipe that had not materially changed for hundreds of years.
You mean it was his first experience of the recipe, right? You don't mean that he was actually munching on ancient bread, do you?
The western barbarians duel with steel, in the east with silken ribbons.
Did she just say that the western barbarians duel in the east with ribbons? Or did she mean to say that someone else duels in the east with ribbons, because if it's those western guys hanging out in the easy, why are they called the western barbarians?
She has talked with Queen Yustnesveas of Sartor, who is a scholar and a mage more than she is a queen.
Ahaha. Okay, nice name. I'm impressed. It must've taken a long time to come up with such an unpronounceable name. But I guess it looks cool on paper, and it's certainly nothing if not unique.
If he hadn't been given a solid fourteen-year-old war horse who was no longer used for the harder runs, he probably would have fallen out of the saddle more than he did.
No kidding. If you're given a crazy, energetic, twitchy horse, there's absolutely no way you'd fall out of the saddle more often, right? Or even an average, young, spirited horse. Or heck, a normal horse who hasn't slowed down with age. Anything would have made you fall out of the saddle more, dude.
He let 'em practice up that stunt riding display.
The "'em"s were really out of hand in the second half of the book. Nobody used it in the first half, but then around page three hundred, suddenly they were everywhere.
....not 500 paces away rose the senior barracks.
That was the only time that numbers were used instead of letters.
His fingers were ready to write Shevraeth.
This is Shev signing a letter on page 363. Why is he having this trouble now, of all times? Hasn't he sent a thousand letters to his parents in the past couple of years? How did he sign those, with Shevraeth or Vidanric? Why wouldn't you have that indecision at the beginning, rather than now?
Okay, done with quotes. Back to nitpicking.
At the beginning Shev doesn't want to cut his hair. He likes having long hair and he's adamant about keeping it. Everyone teases him about his hair and calls him names and demands that he cut it, but he won't. This was the one thing I liked about him - he didn't bow down to the bullies and just cut his hair, he actually defended himself and kept it.
.....But then,
the moron goes out and gets attacked and his hair is forcibly cut off, and he leaves it that way just so he can feel more accepted. Ugh. If he'd defiantly allowed it to grow again, I'd have liked that, but I have no respect for someone who changes who they are just to fit in. Even if it's just trying to like short hair better.
And the end of the book irritated me so much. Spoiler time.
Shev goes home, and on the way he cuts down six armed bandits in two seconds when he has never actually used his training against a human being before. Let me point out that he'd only practiced with a real sword for a few months, he couldn't possibly have been all that used to it. And actually fighting against a living, moving, armed and presumably armored target is a heck of a lot different than beating up some wooden posts in a training courtyard. So yeah, I'll buy that Shev might have been able to kill them, but not in three seconds flat and not without, I don't know, uncertainty? A little fumbling? A reaction to the strangeness?
Oh, he did fall down and whine about the killing once it was done, like he did after he whipped that kid. But that was afterward. He should've been weirded out while he was doing the fighting, don't you think?
Ah. And by the way? This three-second fight was the climax of the book. Shev's childhood friend was with him, and the scene was from the friend's POV. The friend spent the whole fight - all three seconds of it - fumbling to pull his sword out of its sheath. I didn't even get to see the fight itself, because it was from the friend's POV and his eyes were elsewhere. Grrrr. And that was the most exciting thing that happened in the whole book.
Well, there was the part where Shev was leading the kids away from the academy at the end, but that was just the book proving that all of his ideas and suspicions were magically accurate and useful. And there was no actual fighting or urgency to any of it.
But hey, the worst part was the actual ending to the book. See, the first four hundred-something pages of the book detail Shev's three-year stay in a foreign country and what he learns there. But five pages from the end of the book, his parents send him off to another foreign country to learn some stuff. For three years.
Two pages before the end of the book, he returns, and it's apparently been three years.
This means that the first three years took four hundred pages to tell about, and the last three years took three pages. Honestly, I don't even know why this book was written, if that's the case. Firstly, nothing really happened in the whole book. And secondly, if you're willing to just skim over three years in three pages, why didn't you do it the first time? There was nothing terribly important in the first four hundred pages, nothing you couldn't've skipped.
And finally, this monster of a review is at an end. I'm not giving this book a half-star rating because I didn't hate it. I'm giving it a one-star rating instead, because it was one of the most boring things I've ever read and because Senelac offended me. And I'll look up the plot of the sequel before I decide whether or not I'll read it - I think the author could write something awesome, if she had better material. If the next book sounds more exciting than this one, I'll probably try it out.
Bye now! Happy reading! And if you read this book, I hope you enjoy it more than I did.
