Honored Enemy

What a pleasant surprise!

I kinda expected some old side stories placed at the end of the original Riftwar taking place on the outskirts in the cold north, but not a REALLY GOOD novel about enemies banding together to survive against an implacable foe alien to both.

The tale itself is pretty simple in outline but really told well in detail. The nitty gritty is what this is all about, keeping their men alive at all costs, the dangers and distrust, the cultural exchanges, the growing trust, and of course, the knowledge that they would eventually have to square off and kill each other... eventually. :)

As a novel that really affected me, this kinda did the job better than most of Feist's other novels. :) Odd, right? The big action and the show more epic awesomeness is missing here, instead focusing on a deep tale of friendship in adversity. :) Totally recommend. show less

Quite enjoyable read, the co-author obviously knows how to write battles/war stories, this is a war novel dropped into midkemia, but no magicans/quests from your usual Fiest books. Good storyline and characters, tightly paced and written.

Feist is one of my all time favourite authors; but I am not familiar with Forschen. From the first few pages, it became clear that this is not a typical Feist work - Forschen's influence was clear. For example, there are many military fiction details that seem gratuitous in several chapters, such as the ten pages at the end describing the construction and function of a hoist needed to heave logs over a broken bridge. I didn't find this parts added a great deal of value.
The best feature of this book is the three different perspectives: Kingdom, Tsurani and Moredhel which at any given time, almost convince the reader of the righteousness of their particular cause. I especially liked Bovai's perspective which powerfully conveyed his need show more for revenge and his quest to regain his Clan's honour. Though he is doomed as the bad guy, I really enjoyed reading about the Moredhel lifestyle. The duel between Bovai and Tinuva was the ultimate highlight of the book and was very well described and nicely resolved. show less

Honored Enemey is the first book in the Legends of the Riftwar subseries which is in the larger Riftwar Cycle. The books in this subseries are all co-written with a different author and, at least going by this first book and the title of the subseries, it appears they all take place during the time span of the very first book (or set of books depending on how you read it), Magician. This book is co-written by William R. Forstchen, an author I’m not familiar with.

The story focuses on original characters that I don't believe we've seen before. The only familiar characters I noticed were during the prologue. The story is pretty heavily focused on battles and enemies and vengeance. There is definitely more content to it than that, but show more these things are always driving the story. Both the story and the characters took some time to grow on me. I found it pretty tedious early on, and didn’t care much about the characters at all. My interest slowly picked up after the Kingdom soldiers and the Tsurani started working together against the Moredhel.

I couldn’t tell a dramatic difference in the style of this book with Forstchen as a co-author versus the style when Feist writes alone, aside from it being more battle-focused than his other books usually are. Maybe it also had a little less humor, at least of the sort that made me laugh, although I did still laugh a few times. I thought it was a pretty solid story. It held my interest after the slow start, and there were some good moments in it that I really enjoyed. It just didn’t hold anything particularly special for me, so I’m giving it 3.5 stars but rounding down to 3 on Goodreads. show less

Negen jaar in de oorlog tussen het Koninkrijk en de Tsurani. Het front is redelijk stabiel, met zo nu en dan wat kleine acties tegen elkaar. Tijdens een slag tegen de Tsurani raken de troepen van Dennis Hartraft vast achter de vijandelijke linies. De Koninkrijk Troepen en de Tsurani worden gedwongen om samen te werken tegen de hun beider vijand, de Moredhel

Dit boek is meer een militaire fantasy dan het gebruikelijke soort. De vertrouwde personages uit de eerdere boeken komen hier niet in voor, behalve dan een verwijzing naar een aantal. De sub-plots waren indrukwekkend, en naar mijn idee beter dan het hele verhaal zelf.

Wat mij bevreemde was dat de beide legers een soort vakantie hielden gedurende de tijd dat ze vast zaten in de show more vallei. In plaats van mogelijke uitwegen te zoeken, of zich voor te bereiden verdeden ze hun tijd met het baden, feest vieren en zich bezig houden met de religieuze vieringen van beide partijen. Ze hadden schijnbaar tijd genoeg om een badhuis te bouwen.
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Substance: An old story of enemy forces joining up to defeat a common enemy, and eventually overcoming their hatred for each other. Well-played. Basically, this is a Western, with the human defenders as the Rangers, the alien enemy-allies as the "good Indians", the common indigenous enemy as the "bad Indians", and a few farmers and ranchers thrown in for good measure. Good primer for small-force fighting tactics. Good action and characters.

Style: It always amazes me how humans on non-Earth planets nonetheless have Anglo-American names (Dennis, Gregory, Richard, etc.), and most "friendly aliens" are pseudo-Japanese (or Mongols, in this particular case). Also, why is it that ALL fantasy tomes contain lavishly developed maps of the show more imaginary planet, with every possible city and geographic figure delineated EXCEPT the locations where most of the action takes place?
It is a puzzlement.
The prologue starts slow, with atrocious syntax, and is largely irrelevant to the main action except as a set-up, which could have been better done. As is also usual with the fantasy epic genre, there are too many people and places brought in too fast for comprehensibility, with snippets of unnecessary background "history" even while some of the needed background is omitted.

MINL SPOILER:
However, although one can accept that the aliens and humans are sufficiently alike in physical phenotype to become viable comrades, it is more than a little improbable that the two "races" can interbreed.

The long retreat of the heroes would be impossible to believe were it not for the actual example of the Irish clan in the 19th century making a similar long trek, but with more noncombatants to take care of. show less

This is another in the shared worlds series of books set in Midkemia, this time with William Forstchen taking up the reins of the shared storyline. In this story winter is setting in and Kingdom forces under the command of captain Hartraft are making a final sweep through the contested northern lines, aiming to rest up in one of a series of forts established for just this purpose. Unknown to the raiders, a Tsurani patrol is also intent on reaching the same outpost. Not for shelter, but to breach Kingdom lines. And just in case we haven't enough players in the game a group of moredhel are intent on suckering both sides into a confrontation with each other. But both Kingdom and Tsurani solders know what their fates will be if they fall show more into the hands of he moredhel and when the scale of their plight becomes clear, an uneasy truce is declared - the enemy of my enemy may not be my friend but they're a damned sight better than my enemy.

This is another book where I couldn't really sense who wrote which bits, a fairly good sign as I am unfamiliar with Forstchen so there is nothing that is glaringly off and there are some genuinely suspenseful moments though, having read the book, I knew the main protagonists would (mostly!) survive. show less