October Book: DAWNTHIEF

[Sammie]

Discussion open....

I have so much I could say about this book (and believe me I will), but i haven't time to rant it all now, so someone else can get things going....

[juzzza]

Alright, I will kick it off as I really enjoyed this book.

One of the strengths is the relationship between the Raven. The dynamics are excellent and the camaraderie and love the characters feel for each other practically leaps from the pages... I almost phoned my best mate to tell him... OK enough of that. Seriously, this was extremely well executed and I find rare in fantasy.

I also enjoyed the magic system, I have found magic messy in many books and by that I mean the ability to weave it was just a given with no explanation. In Dawnthief, it sat very comfortably in my warped mind.

Tension was excellent and built nicely, especially towards the climax.

Thumbs up from me.

Only downside, some of the dialogue was a little forced and seemed to be used to move the story along or fill gaps.

[rune]

I did like the relationship between the Raven members, and enjoyed how the magic was used in the story.
However, on a whole I found this book didn't hold my attention, and I tried reading the subsequent books, only to put them down.

It had promise, but was a little slow for me.

rune

[juzzza]

Really!?!

I found it very fast paced for a fantasy book and I am used to reading Matthew Reilly...

Can you give me some examples of books you found fast paced Rune?

And I am not challenging you, I am genuinely interested because I like fast paced and this is one of the reasons I like Dawnthief.

[rune]

Originally posted by juzzza
Really!?!

I found it very fast paced for a fantasy book and I am used to reading Matthew Reilly...

Can you give me some examples of books you found fast paced Rune?

And I am not challenging you, I am genuinely interested because I like fast paced and this is one of the reasons I like Dawnthief.

Robin Hobbs Farseer and Tawny Man series is fast pace and a good read.
Laurell K Hamilon's Merdith Gentry series flows really well and I found quite gripping.
James Clemens The Banned and the Bannished series I found gripped me better too, and had plenty going on without slowing too much.
Mark Anthony's The Last Rune series is pretty good, and reasonably action packed, a real page turner.
Sarah Zettel, Isavalta Trilogy (2 books out of this so far ) is pretty good, lots going on and I thought flowed well too

None of the above a particularily war/battle type books. There is fighting invovled, but not so intensive as the war like feel of Dawnthief.

Hope you find these helpful.

rune

[Rob B]

I, obviously to many long standing members here, liked Dawnthief.

There were many strengths to the novel, absolutely driving to the cream of the fantasy crop

• Characters
  The characters were great, the Raven truly act as a team. They are older, experience, a bit cliched, but what in Fantasy really isn't. Hirad and the Unkown, all of the Raven really drive the book. I really like how JB decided to portray an experience group of characters rather than a young group.
  
• Magic presented logically, realistically. Rules govern the magic here. This can be tricky especially since often, magic is, mystical, but the conceit of the colleges is quite good.
  
• Dragons rarely have I seen Dragons in fantasy protrayed so well. Again, JB takes much of what we have seen of Dragons in fantasy, and adds his own spices to craft a very good breed here.
  
• World Balia is truly alive. That itself is a cliche, but it is true. The colleges, the world itself brim with life.

Not to hint too much at future books, but the events in each book really carry over into the subsequent volumes, there is a great internal consistency and sense that nothing just happens, it all has a rippling effect.

[Khallandra]

I'm not sure what it was about the book that grabbed me but the begining just drew me in and before I knew it I had read all the first series and was awaiting on Elfsorrow with anticpation.
The beginning of the book didn't dally about and just got straight to the action and the point. The Raven are such a wonderful group of people and they have great dynamics
I like the Colleges Idea and anything with a mercanary, mage Elf in it has my vote

[Erfael]

Well, I have to say I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's not my typical favorite type of fantasy, rather the kind of thing I would read when I needed a break from the old grind, but it was an extremely fun read.

The thing I liked most is the whole concept of Raven. It doesn't matter if things are good for the world at large. Unless they fit in with the Raven, the Raven will not participate in them. The exploration of this concept through Denser's interaction with the Raven were fairly interesting. I would have liked to have seen a little more of the inside of Denser leading up to the point where he told Hirad that he understood Raven, but I don't think it was particularly poorly expressed as was.

I would also have liked to have seen a resolution to the stealing of the amulet at the beginning. I felt a little like te exchange between Hirad and Sha Kaan was left unresolved in the course of the novel. Perhaps it's resolved in later novels, but I always prefer closed systems to things that rely on series to make sense. i felt that a lot of time was devoted to that encounter to have it not contribute to the rest of the book with the exception of a few of Hirad's feelings throughout.

I was not really looking forward to reading this one, both for the $14 price tag and the, in my opinion, really awful cover art. Some cover art just gives me the feeling of a really bad TSR novel, and this was one of those. As good as most of the book was, I had the hardest time shaking the feeling that I was reading a cheesy adventure novel through most of it.

I think Barclay, even though not my usual cup of tea, has filled my something to read when not reading my usual cup of tea books books space.....did that make any sense. I am curious to read of the further adventures of the raven. I wish there was just a little more meat to the pollitics and philosophy to these books, as then they would be among my absolute favorites. I am curious to hear what a few more people think, as I know we had similar feeligs coming into this one.....Ficus??? Come out of hibernation and tell us what you think.

[FicusFan]

Erf,

Sorry for being among the missing - I have been busy with real life

I did read the book and will try to post later tonight. I am being naughty and posting at work now

[Erfael]

No problem, Ficus. I'm just interested in your take, knowing that we had similar views coming into this one. Take your time. I certainly understand when real life creeps up. I try and post a rear guard to try to prevent that from happening. Usually it just plows through the rear guard though, or performs some sort of flanking maneuver and comes at me from the side.

*****************************************

We're just having sort of a sparse discussion on this one so far, maybe due to the lack of non-action meat....

We could: I thought it was awesome when that one dude sliced that other dude in half and then got killed by that other guy. Then again, I suppose not.

*****************************************

I also would have liked to have received the resolution to the Stylian conflict. He's still outside waiting to steal Dawnthief, isn't he?

Fairly often in fantasy we have the "good guys" learning that the "bad guy" isn't so bad. It seems we have this same type of thing in Dawnthief, but rather than telling that from the perspective of the good guys, it seems that Barclay shows most of that growth through Denser's eyes.

Perhaps the final two things that seemed a little unexplained to me were (left my book at the girlfriends last weekend, forgive this if it's wrong) Erienne's sudden love for Denser and the sudden organization of the "new Raven;" Thraun, Will, Jandyr(?).

Erienne is totally destroyed by her family's demise, yet within the next few days all that seems to be forgotten and she's making a child with Denser and subsequently falling in love with him. This I could not figure out.

As far as the new Raven goes, at their introduction the elven bowman goes through everything about why they can't work together as part of a team. They all seemed like reasons that wouldn't necessarily be resolved just by joining the Raven. Yet as soon as they are members, you hear nothing at all about the problems they had before. Are we to assume that simply becoming Raven worked out all of their issues?

[Nimea]

Time goes so by so quickly . . .

I just wanted to chime in here because of what Erfael wrote.
I had that very same problem with Erienne. At the beginning I felt with and for her, but than she acted in ways I could not really sympathize with anymore.

There are some more occasions that conflicts are talked about but then they just disappear . . .


Another thing - I still want to write more on how I rate this book, but not now - that I would try to throw into the discussion here is one thing that totally bugs me!
The Rage
(You can read more on that in the 'James Barclay'-thread as well and NOM was so kind to answer my rant. )

Is noone else here who had problems with this action?
It was well-written and drove the story onwards - still, I could not believe that an experienced group of mercs and with all their knowledge of the situation would do something like that.
It really would have been even more curious if the kids had survived that . . .

Off to bed now. . .

[Erfael]

Now that you mention it, Nimea, I guess in context it's a little shakey. I can see it working fine against untrained or low morale enemies. Against people who are supposedly trained soldiers, no, i guess it doesn't make sense. And I suppose it does seem like a good way to get those kids killed. I would have really expected at least trying to secure her family before raging.....perhaps sneak then rage. I guess I'm off to read his explanation in the JB thread.

[FicusFan]

Ok my take on Dawnthief.

I was not real thrilled by the choice, but I said I would give it a try. So I ordered it and read it. I was told the first 40 pages were not so good, so I was willing to overlook that.

I really liked the prolog. I cared about the woman and her children, and what happened to them. It was well written, and it sucked me in. It was also a small snapshot of everything that you should have in a story: background, description, action (if a little muted), character development, self-reflection, and dialog (though again in a small amount). It was interesting and didn't take up that much space. So, why oh why, couldn't the rest of the book have included these items ?

The first 60 pages were mostly a hodge-podge of one or two sentence descriptions from a third-person narrator, even though s/he was often 'behind the eyes' of different specific characters. Sometimes several in the same short paragraph. Why didn't we get to spend much time with any one person ? I realize that the jumping around gave a very fast pacing to the story, but so what. It was the beginning of the story, we were trying to learn the ropes of the world and the story, get to know the characters, and try to like them. Fat chance, I couldn't even figure out who was talking, or interacting most of the time. Then to make matters worse, instead of names, JB often used labels for the characters: The barbarian, the elf, the mage, the Raven. I realize these descriptions were in the DP, but I am not going to flip back every sentence to figure it out. They distanced me from any sense that these were people rather than notes on a page.

Why was there no POV character at the start ?

Just when I thought it couldn't get better, and that I was going to have to kill myself: Hirad walked into the Dragon. I loved that scene. I was really fascinated to see what the dragon would do, and what would happen to Hirad. I started to be able to tell him apart from the rest of the crew, because of this scene. It didn't take long, it wasn't boring. So why when the author can obviously write this well, and tell a story this well, does he choose not to ??

That led to what I thought might be a real interesting look at the typical hack and slash fantasy quest: Hirad and company start talking about being over-the-hill. I thought it would have been a wonderful way to add depth to the story if they were dealing with being the best, but also on the cusp of being has-beens due to age and mileage. But that was quickly wiped away, and just used to justify more hacking and slashing. People in the Raven kept getting killed. Why even have them in the first place ? I didn't really care except that it was already hard to keep track of who was who. If it was an attempt to milk some emotion out of me for the characters, it didn't work.

The exception was Sirendor - who seemed to be escaping from the background. He also seemed to be very friendly with Hirad, and all of a sudden he is given a superflous girlfriend and then rendered safely dead. Is that a terrified male heterosexual reaction or automatic homophobia ? who knows, but just when Sirendor seemed to become interesting, he is killed. That seemed to be the theme of the book, just when something might develop into a new and interesting path, it is killed and standard fantasy is shoveled in.

There seemed to be a lot of time wasted on physical descriptions, and clothing. I found it wasteful because we didn't get character development, and we almost never got inside them. They also started to run together with the obligatory: tall, long-haired, well-muscled... I felt like I was unwrapping Ken dolls.

I again liked the time we spent with Sylian, because it was a page or two. I had no idea if he was going to be a goodie or badie, but he was at least more than just words on the page. So just when I would get fed up with the writing and storytelling there would be this little oasis in the story that kept me going.

When we met Erienne again, I was terribly disappointed. She was well done in the prolog, but had somehow become some victimized romance heroine later in the book. She was weeping and wailing, and becoming, I am sure, fetchingly disheveled. Where was the smart strong woman of the prolog, the one she would have had to be to defy her college and live outside the rules ? She ushered in the period of purple prose that seemed to infect everything for about 150 pages. I felt that the writting style was turgid and overly dramatic. In my mind I saw a room full of William Shatners sitting around a table, reading dialog and stage direction (the story) and chewing on the scenery.

At some point JB killed the Unknown Warrior off, who seemed to be another empty character. Yet with him gone there really was no 'Raven' anymore. He was promptly resurrected and returned to the fold.

The new band was added in to make up for those killed, even though they were mostly empty undeveloped characters (both old and new). For the new crop what had passed for character development was a bit about how they didn't work well together ? So now they are wonderful buddies, take the oath, and everything is just fine ?

And what was the RAGE ? Rescue by soccer hooligans ? Call me foolish but most professional military organizations seem to start with stealth until it is blown, and then they go with fast and deadly. The Raven just seemed bumble around making noise and hoping to scare the defenders to death. Fine for them, but not an option when there are hostages to rescue.

I found Hirad 'the barbarian' to become annoying. I liked him, but he was not in any way a barbarian (not in language, intelligence, or uncontrolled behavior). It seemed to become a plot device to allow Ilkar, usually, to give the reader more information without it seeming like an info dump. But you know, it could have been worked into a normal conversation. We didn't need to 'stop eveything' to explain the obvious to Hirad just about every other page.

I liked that Ilkar, who was a goodie, had an unreasonable prejudice towards Denser. I came to like Denser and his cat, because they were somewhat developed, but I never got what drove him to rise above his college-mates. I liked the shape-shifter, but can't remember his name. Finally I was disappointed that Sylian who had some depth and was possibly interesting, became this terribly cliched baddie.

I liked the idea of the magic system, being a force you have to learn to work. And that not all mages can do all things. I found the evil Wytch Lords and the fighitng barrons and college heads to be predictable and boring. I hated the quest, it was like just get it over with. I am glad it wrapped up quickly at the end instead of being dragged out. I thought the time rips were interesting but under used, as was the dragon.

I hated that there were almost no women in the world in positions of power, or even in everyday positions: farmer, soldier... It felt like a medieval fantasy with a 50's outlook. The women were moslty whores/madonnas/victims. Selyn seemed to have possibility, but she was killed.

I liked the map, but it didn't match up to the story in several places.

So all in all: I thought there were good patches, and I came to care somewhat about some of the characters by the end. But I didn't enjoy the read, can't really recommend the book, nor will I be reading the sequels. If the author writes a different type of story I will be interested enough to check it out. I think he has talent and hopefully experience will strengthen his skills and help him to be less conventional in the story department.

[Erfael]

Thank you, Ficus.

Anyone using the word hooligans in a review gets big points with me.

It's true what you say about Stylian. I thought he was quite interesting until he turned into "mua-ha-ha" man. I hadn't really noticed in the wrap-up that that had happened and he had become so much less interesting, but it did happen.

[fluffy bunny]

I finally found some time to give this book another go (the opening threw me off the first time). With only 100 pages to go, I can say it's better than I expected. I do wonder how much of the story was developed from roleplaying games the author participated in.

There seemed to be a lot of time wasted on physical descriptions, and clothing. I found it wasteful because we didn't get character development, and we almost never got inside them.

I knew there was a good way of saying it - thanks Ficus. Some of the characters were better developed than others. Hirad and Denser's characters were well fleshed out but there were a number of characters that lost out.

Good magic system.

The sense of camaraderie between early members of the Raven is well presented.

Loved the dragon scene. Hopefully the big chap will be back as a foil for the characters.

The bit about the rage wasn't well executed IMHO - after hyping it up for several pages (the raven's 'chaos tactic' etc), at the end of the action, I was befuddled as to what the author was trying to convey.

This stuff about Erienne wanting Denser's seed is a bit random and not elaborated on. For someone overcome by grief over the loss of a child, the way she proceeds doesn't quite ring true. It's a bit of a crap reason for joining the Raven.

What are people's opinions on the Unknown Warrior? His storyline just didn't appeal to me.