3rd person limited / past tense Epic high fantasy Heavy focus on character on character drama with lots of inner monologue New city and culture explored 3rd person limited / past tense Epic high fantasy Heavy focus on character on character drama with lots of inner monologue New city and culture explored lightly.
(The Robert Jordan Special) 100 pg of setup 600-800 pages of deliberating/moaning and groaning 100 pages of breakneck blink and you miss it action and intensity
The huge Wheel of Time series continues in this thousand page slab. Robert Jordan somehow manages to make this book feel like nothing is happening at all while also moving huge plot points forward. It's an odd sensation that comes about mostly due to the long gaps between moments of importance. This is maybe the slowest paced book in the series to date.
The world-building continues to be top-notch. New enemies are introduced. The magic system continues to feel incredible. There is a lot of good to be found here. It just feels a little dry as the pacing drags and rolls ever so slowly forward.
Character developments are a bit of a scattered good/bad here. As some characters are given some powerful developments and step forward in potency and others feel rather diminished. Nyneave continues to be insufferable(though less so than the torture of the previous book).
If you survived the valley that was The Fires of Heaven this book is likely going to feel like a gradual uphill climb back to something feeling better. The story is full of momentous events and actions of great gravity, but it never feels anything other than slow....more
Following the events of Sword in the Storm, Midnight Falcon follows Bane, the bastard son of Connavar. Bane has grown up rejected and mostly seen as anFollowing the events of Sword in the Storm, Midnight Falcon follows Bane, the bastard son of Connavar. Bane has grown up rejected and mostly seen as an outcast among his people despite his natural charisma. The story begins with a journey, then a quest, which culminates in a story of redemption and at least an attempt at mending broken and or stunted relationships of the past. The merit of Gemmells work is in how flawed his characters are. They will infuriate you with their stubbornness. They will make mistakes that even they see coming and yet they cannot turn away because they follow their hearts, just as people do.
Powerful, often heroic, and broken with very mortal and realistic problems. You will root for them, fear for them, perhaps cry for them. Perhaps even the villains will poke at your heart strings a bit as you see them seated fully in their humanity. It is a marvel to take a fantasy story filled with bits of mysticism and magic, dipped in crude violence, and rolled in ego, but to come out of it with characters that feel so very human and fun to read.
Midnight Falcon brings a strong resolution to the somewhat open ended query that left Sword in the Storm hanging. It carries with that resolution a solid improvement across the board in the delivery of the writing. It's a better story. Told in a better way. Improved in whole over it's previous entry, though it depends on it for much of the meat of the tale.
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