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Loading... Spirit Gate (2007)by Kate Elliott
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. First book in a trilogy, with, I thought, compelling characters and enough mystery that it took me quite a while to start guessing what may be going on. The world itself is complex and somewhat confusing with its different religious systems that appear to be all the same, with its different ethnic descriptions that all have a common language, so the underlying philosophy may make the rest of the story potentially simplistic, but for right now, I want to keep reading because I like especially the female characters and the eagles. Once The Hundred was a place of peace and safety. The Guardians delivered justice and the reeves flew in answer to them. But no one has seen the Guardians in generations. The reeves still patrol but their authority has been on the wane for quite a while, and now there are reports of attacks on villages. Reeves and their eagles have been murdered. Something dark and troubling is on the rise. Okay, so that blurb is fairly standard for an epic fantasy, but don’t dismiss this book as a by the numbers story because it is so much more than that. First off, the world-building is excellent. There are a number of different countries and histories that we are introduced to. The Hundred is where the majority of the characters come from, where most of the action takes place, but there is also the Sirniakan Empire where the genders are sequestered from one another, and there is the land where Mei comes from, now ruled over by Qin warriors, where the family is ruled by the male head. Full review with spoilers hidden here : http://www.susanhatedliterature.net/2014/11/spirit-gate/ I enjoyed the author's Crown of Stars series quite a lot. This book has been on my shelf for a long time and I finally picked it up. But sadly I did not finish it. I nearly gave up at page 100, kept going to page 400 and then just thought life is too short to carry on with a book that I was not enjoying. I just didn't care about anybody in it. Too much unnecessary detail. Several points of view can work but when the reader cares nothing for any of them you are in trouble. Sorry Ms Elliott but this is not for me. I very nearly stopped reading this after the first chapter - killing off the first viewpoint character right then really kind of blew it for me. But, I soldiered on. A couple bland chapters later and I was ready to give it up again. It seemed remarkably predictable, and the characterization just wasn't compelling enough to hold my interest. But I read a review that suggested that the ending more than made up for the book being a bit slow. I found it more than a bit slow - more like telling about 4 different stories kind of lamely in the same volume, with random viewpoint changes and occasional unexplained time shifts. So I kept on reading, on the off chance it really would get better. It didn't. The end of this volume was very nearly what I expected it to be at the end of the first chapter. The viewpoint changes were choppy and often inexplicable. As I feared, this isn't so much a volume one as a part one. The ending didn't satisfy me enough to be the end of a book, but the story doesn't interest me enough for me to keep reading it. I had thought that, it being fairly simple, it would be a good thing to read while recovering from surgery. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for this book, I didn't need any pain medicine - it might have been more interesting if I were a bit drugged up. I will say that the author's done very good, extensive world building. Someone who's more interested in the universe, and is comfortable with a broad, meandering, ensemble story would enjoy this more than I did. no reviews | add a review
Fantasy.
Fiction.
HTML: World Fantasy and Nebula Award finalist Kate Elliott breaks new ground in a brilliantly original new fantasy set in a unique world of fabled cities, mysterious gods, and terrible dangers. From the first page readers will be swept up in the story of Mai and Captain Anji, as they become unwitting players in a conflict that began many years earlier, and which will shake the foundations of their land. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I found the whole thing an insult to the reader's attention. Get an editor. And for God's sake, tell a story that I can care about.
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