[Blaze]

By Riftwar Legacy, I mean the Krondor books (Betrayal, Assassins, Tear of the Gods). Now, I wanted to ask if these were worth reading, because as I see it, they aren't essential to the main story.

I usually tend not to make decisions based on Amazon reviews, but when I see that almost everyone gave Krondor: The Betrayal only 1 or 2 stars, I am wondering if this legacy is really worth it. It seems that this is written off a game, which is yet another reason to add to my reluctance. Also, the plot doesn't seem all that interesting, and there probably are few of those fantasy elements like magic, that I really enjoy from Feist. Also, is this series mainly just about Arutha, Jimmy and other Krondor people because as much as I like these characters, I would like to see those other main heroes from Riftwar (Pug, Tomas).

Now, whatever your opinion may be, I'd also appreciate if you could give me a short intro to the series. For example, what characters do we see again from Riftwar, the basic plot of the story, comments on things like character development, etc. Whatever you can give me to help me make a choice.

At the moment, I am thinking of just going over to Prince of the Blood, but tell me what you guys think.

[Ouroboros]

The 'Legacy' novels seemed to be pretty much stand-alone stories featuring minor or new characters, and took place on a much smaller scale than the preceding books. However, recent books from Feist have rather bizarrely tied into events which occurred in some of them, 'Tear of the Gods' for example.

You can certainly get away without reading them, or just reading a summary of them online, but it comes down to how much of a Feist fan you are. If you're planning on reading all the rest of what Feist has written right up to the current 'Conclave of Shadows / Shadow War' storyline then you might as well read them now for the sake of completeness.

For what it's worth, they're not bad. I don't think you can trust Amazon reviews at the best of times ("the slush pile of reviews" as someone once referred to them) and I think the low ratings probably has to do with Feist deliverying stand-alone stories that were on a scale fans didn't really want after the conclusion of the Riftwar books.

[Werthead]

The low Amazon ratings are because the books were utterly, appallingly terrible. Feist is a writer who, when he's on his game, is really enjoyable (Magician, The Empire Trilogy, Honoured Enemy, Rise of a Merchant Prince). However, he was going through his divorce at the time he wrote these books and they definitely feel like someone who was distracted and not giving his all when he wrote them. Krondor: The Betrayal is probably his single weakest novel to date.

However, bad news on Pug and Tomas. Because they'd become so powerful by the end of Darkness at Sethanon, Feist only deploys them when stuff gets really bad. They're still around and play reasonable roles in The Serpentwar Saga and Conclave of Shadows, but they're not the main focus of those series and emerge in the storyline in full power relatively late in the day. Pug has a bit more to do in the later books than Tomas, though.

[Bond]

I stopped reading Feist because I had heard the Legacy series was below par and indeed the book Krondor: The Betrayal is awful. I still might read the other Legacy books someday though but if you want to experience Betrayal play the computer game that's now freeware. It was SOOOO much better. In fact it is what started me on Feist to begin with and was one of my best computer game experiences ever. That was a long time ago, however, and visually it cannot hold a candle to today's games.

[Thalador]

I thought the Legacy series did have a number of interesting facets, but it's quite evident that the books were written to accompany a game. I've noticed that younger fantasy readers don't tend to pick up on the lack of development and continuity. In the series Feist tends to write basically a sequence of action events right after one another with almost no emphasis on story. I mean, over a few chapters in Betrayal, Feist has his characters get attacked at least five times by small bands of Moredhel.

If you're going to read the series, you have to prepare yourself for a rather painful experience. Not that it's much worse than the Conclave of Shadows. The quality of Feist's work has been slowly deteriorating, so he many never come close to equaling his achievement in Magician.

[Edthebestest]

The only reason that I read these books was for completeness, and despite them being pretty atrocious, I like the characters and the world.
Am I right in think that this series hasn't been finished? I seem to recall that the last book, tear of the gods, didn't end the story? In any case some of the things in the latest series refer to things in that series that hadn't been finished... or are we supposed to fill in the blanks ourselves?

[mephistoex]

For future reference I do hope noone doesn't read the whole series because the riftwar legacy doesn't seem to be good. Well.. the story was made to back up a computer game, what more is there to say. Though it was a good game at it's time.

Having just finished with the newest Into the dark realm, I must say feist has again topped himself.