James Barclay (1) (1965–)

I had such happy memories of the 6 Barclay "Raven" books that I just had to get this to see what they do next.

Admittedly, even reading the back cover synopsis I began to have my doubts. [Mild spoiler alert for the first 6 books] Barclay did a great job in the first books to kill off some of his best characters- that made a good impact. It also put the books a step above much of the usual swords+sorcerors material, where every character that gets described in more than 2 sentences survives show more with minimal damage (the 'A-team' method). I'm not sure why he decided to make the series continuation in progressional time (rather than say, an early or mid-life Raven adventures).

So, does Barclay manage the "Dallas shower scene" resurrections in anything like a believable manner? Does the story work?

Overall, I'm afraid not, although he did get close in a couple places, this is a disappointing book.

The premise is that the land of the dead has been under attack by mana-hungry alien Garonin and now they are coming to the real world. Thus can all of the Raven dead come back as zombies into borrowed recently-dead bodies. Various wrong bodies. No hilarity ensues. The rest of the book they must fight the Garonin and find a different dimension to retreat into.

Where the zombie-Raven had potential grudges from their death events having clear blame, it was all rather unsatisfactorily skirted over. Where elf brothers/ mage wives are involved, again, this book barely acknowledges deep previous relationships. I laughed out loud when the husband/ wife discussed their dead daughter, very poor. It is as though someone took potted biographies of nearly every single character from the first books and then only used those bare facts. No real characterization or development comes through in this book at all. All of the characters you loved disintegrate to their most two-dimensional stereotypical catchphrases and attributes. There is some inter-dimensional travelling that is also not greatly expanded, all left to the "woo". If I could re-write this book, I would take out the apparent need to name check EVERYTHING from the first 6 books. Also maybe the older dead souls could have lost the strength to return? (thus stopping the quick write/ rekill of characters it feels he didn't know what to do with). I think we could have done without the dragons/ elves/ interdimensional parts of the storylines and in particular the Protectors and dragons are shoehorned in, just for the namecheck. The battles are well written and interesting but I do believe less could have been more for this book.

If you've enjoyed the first 6 it may be best to leave it at that. Even 2.5 stars is more wishing on what this could have been. I accept that I'm out of step with the majority opinion here; I've not read any poor review of this book anywhere online yet. show less

Feels like someone's decently cleaned-up account of their breakneck tabletop RPG campaign. If it was it must have been a heck of a campaign, but with the events and character interplay now firmly set in stone it sort of lacks the excitement that interactivity and randomness can bring even to not-so-tremendously innovative characters & situations.

Not awfully bad but I usually expect a bit more out of my published fantasy.

This is the start to a new fantasy series set in a world the author knows well. He has written other books that take place 3000 year after this one and now he has gone back to look at the history of the elves. Or what I felt it to be, the massacre and destruction of them.

The elves have one big enemy, themselves. They are made up from different threads, let's just say races, and those will now start to fight between themselves and they especially go after the leaders. Their world is breaking show more apart. Oh those stupid elves, the whole point behind all of this is for some to get power and they use humans to do it. But we all know you can't trust humans. The elves should have known better. The whole book turns into one horrific slaughter. It is the the big bad Empire/Colonists/you name it who turns on the natives for their resources and slave labour and the elves have nothing to put up against the magic the humans wield. Just as other "explorers" had firepower.

But do not think all is lost. No the elves have one group of fighters who can take on anyone, they are just so few. And then there is Takar who is crazy and lives alone in the forest and 90% of the elves hate him after he left the elves on their home world to die. But he had to save the new world. I understand.

The thing that bothered me was that I had a hard time getting into this book. It felt confusing since everything happened so fast, it is truly action fantasy. Also the names, I had no idea who was a boy or a girl and it took quite some time to get it all in. Maybe in the end there was too much happening for me. I usually say I am not that into character driven novels but here I would have wanted more.

But even with those troubles I still got really fascinated because I want to know what will happen to this poor elven nation. I just want to go there and kick out those humans. I also wondered what happens in those later books since that would leave me clues of the state of the elves in this world.

Conclusion:
It left me with a funny feeling. The book was not for me but still I crave more. The author was just that good. I really do want to know what happens next. He has a good voice and imagination, I will give him that. show less

Not a bad read, but there are some very over-used tropes in this book, as well as one scene that felt a bit over done to prove the "bad guy" was "really bad." Honestly, it wasn't the main characters that I ended up loving, but the Exchequer. There were some moments where the plot really slogged, but that was peronsal preference. I'm not a fan of detailed, drawn out war scenes and tactics, more character driven. Over all, not a bad way to have spent two days, but not quite good enough for it show more to be on my re-read shelves. show less