Initiate's Trial: First book of Sword of the Canon (The Wars of Light… (original 2011; edition 2011)

Reading this book had me worried, because it's been a while since I'd read anything in this series AND I hadn't read books in between Curse of the Mistwraith/Ships of Merior/Fugitive Prince and this one... So needless to say, everything here was really only vaguely familiar.

Reading the first chapter made me remember why I had mixed feelings about the books a long time ago (and why they took me an inordinate amount of time to read)—Wurts very much enjoys the use of convoluted sentence structures, long sentences, and adjectives. This was fine while the story was building, but in the various battle scenes I found myself skimming ahead because reading these long, twisting sentences was slowing down the scene.

Throughout the book, I didn't feel as "left behind" as I think I could have, but there were surely things that would have made more sense or become richer in meaning had I not skipped from the beginning of the series to the end. There were quite a few references that I had to leave behind because I just didn't understand them, and while I feel okay doing that every so often, I realize other readers may not feel the same.

What I really admired about the book is that instead of turning me off the series (for various reasons—too difficult to read quickly, the typeset is too small, I've missed a lot in between the last of these books that I've read and this one, and so forth), reading this book made me really want to go back and get caught up. I enjoyed the multifaceted characters, and I really enjoy series where a set of characters are developed over the course of thousands of pages. This is certainly an intriguing read, and at some point I'll get my hands on the rest of the books to have it all make sense! ( )

There is a chance that I would have a different opinion if I had read the earlier books in the series, but I found Initiate's Trial impossible to read and eventually just gave up. The prose is simultaneously dull and confused, the story choppy and difficult to follow. I don't mind stories that take a few liberties with verbosity, but this particular book went too far. ( )

These Wars of Light and Shadow books take some attention to read but are rewarding if you have the patience for it. Wurts is descriptive in her writing, which means that the books can at times be a little slow but also quite immersive as far as world building goes. Initiate's Trial is the first book in the third arc of the series. It takes place hundreds of years after the previous book, so not really necessary to read the others before reading this one.

Enjoyable book. I hope to read more in this series in the near future. Author has a good way at make characters and action move along nicely. ( )

I received this book from the Early reviewers program on Library thing. I had a difficult time reading this particular book, due to the very small print in the book, however, with having not read any of the books in this series and then reading this one, I have to say there was enough background information from previous books to get through it with minimal frustration. I thought the book was very details and the characters and their unique names were a story of their own. I enjoyed the story told, and all of the detail. I did rate the book 3 of 5 stars and that is mostly due to the writing style being complicated at times, and mixed with the tiny font made it somewhat hard to read, but otherwise I did enjoy this book and even though would love to go backwards and read the first 8 books of this very high fantasy series. I hope a lot of people read and love this series. My only advice, or more so hope for future books is bigger font. ( )