I'm not sure how I feel about this one. We go from Phedre's head to Imriel's for the narration. I like Imriel and, although I missed Phedre, it was interesting to get to see her from a different perspective. But the story moved extremely slowly. I got half way through the book before anything really happened and, even when the action did finally get started, I think I was so resentful of the 350 pages of nothing I had read to get to that point that I didn't fully appreciate it. There was a promising moment right at the beginning when we learn that Melisande is missing but then they all decide to just let that go and that was extremely disappointing.
After that we spent four years watching Imriel grow up. While there was some important character development here and Carey actually did a pretty good job with the pacing, I was still left wondering if a plot was ever going to emerge. I'm still not sure that one did. Basically, Imriel grew up, he's still pretty angsty but learning to get over his issues from Darsanga, he makes some new friends, there's a battle, the good guys win, the end. Oh, and then it took him 50 pages to get back home.
I think, aside from the exorbitantly long exposition, I had a hard time investing in the battle because it wasn't Imriel's fight. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and trying to help out some friends. With Phedre's adventures, there was always so much at stake. I had to keep reading to find out what happened because, if she failed, her country would be invaded or her queen murdered/overthrown. She got sucked into these adventures because of the enormous historical events that were happening around her. With Imriel, I feel like he was really just a bored rich boy playing at being a poor scholar for a while and that made it a lot harder for me to root for him.
No comments:
Post a Comment