This book put a lot of effort into worldbuilding, but too little into character building. The story has no less than 12 main characters, but they all just feel the same three emotions in an endless cycle -- anger, despair, sadness. Round and round they go, repetitively, until at last they solve all their problems and live happily ever after.
It's just a little too emo for me. Of course, given the situation I threw these characters into, it's no wonder they were feeling a little down. I guess my larger complaint with the book then is just the sheer monotony of how bad things were. If your whole life is nothing but pain and loss, I'm not sure there's much of worth to say about it.
In order to differentiate all those characters, I had to have them constantly at loggerheads with each other. Otherwise they'd all bleed into an undifferentiated mass. But when you do that, the constant discord is ugly and obnoxious. If people are going to travel together, they need to have at least some level of courtesy and respect for each other, so that people can feel safe and happy in each other's midst. That just doesn't happen in this story, not until the very last page.
It also feels like the story sometimes just starts rambling about irrelevant things for no discernible reason. It's longer than most of my other books, but not for a good reason.
Okay, enough for my complaints. On the bright side, it is longer than most of my other books, so it has more chances for cool scenes or lines, which it delivers often enough. It also has the most fleshed-out fantasy world of all my books, a completely separate universe to Earth's, a feat of imagination.
Also, I think the early chapters where Glen and Rain were just growing up in their home village, long before any swords or sorcery were involved, were extremely interesting. I'm always impressed when you can keep the reader's attention over 'trivial' matters, instead of the end of the world or the threat of a romantic relationship breaking up or the chance of one beginning. To deal with just a mundane life, where only mundane things happen, and make it interesting -- the book manages that for a long time and that's pretty darn cool. Of course eventually the world is threatened and the magic starts flying, but for a long time it's just the tale of two kids growing up like you'd find anywhere.
I also took this opportunity to fix all the minor spelling and grammar errors that cropped up. Now the book should be easier to read than ever before, for those who avail themselves of the opportunity.
If I had to rate my fictional books, now that I've reread them all recently, it would look like this: Wyrd Saga (four books read in this order: Dead Enders, Choice Givers, Followers and Emulators, and then the spinoff novel within the novel Changeling), In Another World With 100 Waifus, Sellsword, The Emperor's Son Books I and II, The Twin Spires, The Greatest Vision, Illyria, Wind.
I can only give tepid praise to The Emperor's Son on down, though. I can understand why others wouldn't like these books, because even I, their author, can see their flaws. I'm more concerned with people reading the top six, which I can endorse wholeheartedly.
It took considerable effort to write these books, edit them, format them for blogger, proofread them, etc. It sure would be nice if I received a positive comment or two in exchange. So if anyone has read any of these books or likes any of them, don't be shy and leave a note saying so. I'd love to hear from you.
Meanwhile, I dropped 'Gazing into the Abyss' by Paul Romero out of my music hall of fame. It just wasn't good enough to merit 100 listen-throughs. Back to 5416 songs in all.
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