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Submitted by Tim Newton 
(Nov 30, 2003)

There are books in the world that are just so painfully derivative that it is no wonder the fantasy genre is so reviled by so, so many readers. This is certainly one of them and I hope you steer clear.

This book has a clever premise, this is true, but fails to fulfil its potential. Characterization, personality, and strong dialogue are left by the roadside as the author plods on to a predictable ending of clunky melodrama and muddy, sloppy writing.

Good people, by all means clean your navel, organize your paperclip collection, or practice the oboe for all I care. I just strongly recomend doing anything, absolutely anything, rather than reading this book.

I just finished reading this, after reading dozens of negative reviews by people who are taking fantasy way too seriously. It has a very interesting storyline and a lot of interesting concepts, but it has a bad rap because of what's printed on the cover.

"The Epic Fantasy of the Year"

The only thing really wrong with this book is that it was overhyped. And other people can't seem to get past that.

Whenever I read a book, I take everything at face value. The only thing about it that bothered me were the info-dumps scattered throughout. Even that isn't unusual for the first book in a series. The characters were great, not the best I've read, but not the worst either. The battles were tense, exciting, and driven.

If nothing else, Mr. Newcomb knows how to write a good fight scene. I'd love to see him, in the future, write full fledged battles, with cavalry charges, flights of Minions, and opposing spellcasters. If he's as good at that as he is with swordplay, we will have a force to be reckoned with in fantasy.

This book had great potential. There were good ideas, interesting creatures and good characters in the story. Unfortunately though the author was very repetative, which made come of the characters seem weaker than they should have. It was a real shame that there was so much padding in the story too, it slowed down the plot.
There are good scenes in this story, the characters have interesting abilities and I did like the good and evil struggle between witches and wizards. However, the plot was slowed down too much with detail and the poor characters were constantly repeating themselves.

No, No, No, No. This book has a good plot but the telling of the tale was badly done. I stuck it out for the first hundred or so pages and decided to skim it for the parts that were of interest to me. It took too long for the story to take off. The love interest that is necessary to a good story, no matter how small, was absent till the very end. The role of women was very limited and despite the large magical power available to them there was no great execution of it. The only reason I stayted with it for so long was my desire to see how the story ended.

This book had a good premise, but very poor execution. The characters are poorly developed. While pieces of their past and motivations are given, it just isn't enough to make you care about any of them. The women are all divided into two groups: insanely evil or complete victims. The men are either "heroes" or rapists. There is no in between, no shades of gray. Even Shailiha, the nearest thing there is to a heroine, wavers between evil and victim, never once truly establishing an real identity for herself. It took me forever to get through this novel, simply because I didn't really care what happened to any of the characters. There was no page-turning suspense or drama, just a plodding along through the story to arrive at a convenient conclusion. I will not be reading the sequel.