Finished Raymond E. Feist's Silverthorn today
Have been powering through it the last few days (think I did around 1/3 of the book since Tuesday or something; I'm not the world's fastest reader) and finished it on the train today on the way to the city/uni.
As I may have mentioned with the previous book in the series, Magician, I've found that yet again it's not as good as the Empire series (co-authored with Janny Wurts). The style is different, yes, but there just wasn't this gorgeous feeling of flow throughout the book. I'm not talking about flow between events or that kind of thing, more of a style issue. And no, it's not about those dream-like passages like at the start of A Darkness at Sethanon where he doesn't use names and is quite abstract. I'm finding it hard to put a finger on just what doesn't flow exactly.
Not to say that I didn't enjoy it. I felt it ended a bit prematurely/abruptly and that perhaps there could have been something more to it - not that the events weren't thought out, planned and made sense in the context...I just felt that it wasn't the same sort of epic that any of the Empire series was. It's kind of like a short prelude to set up the third book (Sethanon), more like a glorified spacefiller or it got chopped into its own book so that Sethanon wasn't a tome (by Feist standards I suppose).
The character progressions were good also - particularly for Martin and especially Jimmy, both being raised to the fore somewhat at the end of Magician. I started out Silverthorn not liking Jimmy so much, but came around quite a lot to him.
I particularly liked how the establishment of the Academy of Magicians on Stardock was coming along...esp young William and Fantus :D
Am muchly looking forward to Sethanon, to see how all the events set up end. After that I'll be taking leave from Feist's works and probably battling into the Dragonlance series, as well as trying to find the motivation (yet again) to read Anne Rice's Blood and Gold, which has been sitting on my chair for 3 weeks untouched now.
As I may have mentioned with the previous book in the series, Magician, I've found that yet again it's not as good as the Empire series (co-authored with Janny Wurts). The style is different, yes, but there just wasn't this gorgeous feeling of flow throughout the book. I'm not talking about flow between events or that kind of thing, more of a style issue. And no, it's not about those dream-like passages like at the start of A Darkness at Sethanon where he doesn't use names and is quite abstract. I'm finding it hard to put a finger on just what doesn't flow exactly.
Not to say that I didn't enjoy it. I felt it ended a bit prematurely/abruptly and that perhaps there could have been something more to it - not that the events weren't thought out, planned and made sense in the context...I just felt that it wasn't the same sort of epic that any of the Empire series was. It's kind of like a short prelude to set up the third book (Sethanon), more like a glorified spacefiller or it got chopped into its own book so that Sethanon wasn't a tome (by Feist standards I suppose).
The character progressions were good also - particularly for Martin and especially Jimmy, both being raised to the fore somewhat at the end of Magician. I started out Silverthorn not liking Jimmy so much, but came around quite a lot to him.
I particularly liked how the establishment of the Academy of Magicians on Stardock was coming along...esp young William and Fantus :D
Am muchly looking forward to Sethanon, to see how all the events set up end. After that I'll be taking leave from Feist's works and probably battling into the Dragonlance series, as well as trying to find the motivation (yet again) to read Anne Rice's Blood and Gold, which has been sitting on my chair for 3 weeks untouched now.