Rides a Dread Legion

For anyone who has never read a Raymond E. Feist book before, let this be a warning - it's the latest in a long line of books - the 25th in fact. It isn't one long series - they are several series and a few standalone books but they all share a common thread and some common characters. If you're new to Feist, I suggest you start with 'Magician' one of the true gems of the fantasy genre.

I've been a Raymond E. Feist addict for more than 15 years - since I was 12 in fact. Early on I used to read other fantasy authors just as religiously - David Eddings and Robert Jordan amonst others, but soon grew out of all of them, all except Feist. The last couple of books have however been a disappointment so there was a lot riding on this book, show more particularly as it is the first book in a new series.

In this book, a lost warrior race of elves, millions strong, are fighting a losing battle against an endless demon hoard. To avoid extinction, they search for and find their lost homeworld - Midkemia, and escape to it. But it is not in their nature to accept other races as their equals - they only understand ruling over inferior beings with force.

The good news is that the author delivers. Lots of new and different characters, new revelations about the world of Midkemia, and more from some old favourite characters. OK so it's not as good as some of his early books, but it is good, and an excellent start to a new series. show less

(Alistair) And now, another LibraryThing Early Reviewers book (which I have taken to booklogging out of sequence to get the reviews in while they're still relevant), and a return to Midkemia.

I had actually mostly stopped reading Feist after the Serpentwar quadralogy - as I vaguely recall, the books which were coming out then were the Krondor: Some Subtitle videogame spinoff books, which I suspected indicated a certain jumping of the shark going on.

Anyway. Seeing this on the Early Reviewers program, I thought it'd be an interesting read to see if that was right, and if it wasn't, well, I'd enjoyed his earlier books quite a lot and would be pleasantly surprised. (I picked up his earlier, post-Serpentwar trilogy at about the same time, show more which will be coming later, since it's not an ER book.)

I do seem to be pleasantly surprised, fortunately enough. It's hard for me to say too exactly, since this book does refer back extensively to events in the Conclave of Shadows and Darkwar books which I have not yet read through, but I believe that while perhaps not quite as good as the earliest Feist, it is on the level of the Serpentwar books. Which is to say, definitely an enjoyable read and a good-sized step above the Extruded Fantasy Product category.

I look forward to revisiting it after filling in the missing trilogies in my personal continuity, Conclave of Shadows and Darkwar, and indeed to finding out how those seem to me. (The Amazon reviews for this one suggest not great, but, well, we all know how reliable those are, right?)

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2009/04/rides_a_dread_legion_raymon... ) show less

What can I say about Raymond Feist? I've been a fan for a very long time. He also has the remarkable quality of actually getting better over time, of developing his craft, and not resting on his laurels.

Rides A Dread Legion is a superb example of this. I could not put it down, and every page was well written and engaging. My biggest complaint is that this feels like the beginning of a series, in a rather detrimental fashion. The characters are not developed as strongly as they would be if the story ended, and plots are started up with reckless disregard for the fact that they cannot be satisfactorily addressed in a single novel. Rather than exiting the first book gracefully while leaving open the continuation, you reach the end of the show more book just as the first consequence of the building numbers of plots occurs. Further, the book ends in a whirlwind that feels disjointed from the rest of the book. It is too rushed, too sudden, ends too quickly, and has no space for denouement. With no room to breathe at the end, and no second novel at hand to turn to, I was left with simultaneous dissatisfaction and incredibly satisfied hunger for more. show less

Rides a Dread Legion is the first book in the Demonwar Saga duology, which is the second-to-last subseries in Raymond E. Feist’s very, very long Riftwar Cycle.

I had similar problems with this book as I did with the first book in the previous subseries. I struggled through the first half due to how much recapping took place. We have new characters who randomly pause to muse over known history or legends for the sake of reminding the reader about events in previous books, and then we have the even more blatant recaps from the old and familiar characters as they remind each other about things they all experienced, or recollect those things in their heads.

Since I usually read series books close together, I’m not the best person to show more judge how much recapping is too much, but this seemed like way too much to me. For readers randomly jumping in at this point, the story makes enough sense without knowing all the nitty-gritty details of the back story. For readers who have read those previous books, part of the fun of reading a series is catching and understanding all the connections between books for yourself without having them spoon fed to you. At least, that’s part of the fun for me. I do accept that tedious recaps are one of the downsides of the way I choose to read series books, but Feist seems to have taken it to an excessive level in some of his later series starter books.

The second half did really pick up and the book introduces some interesting new things. I had a lot of real-world distractions going on while reading this, so I think that partly explains why I had so much trouble powering through the recaps. Once the story picked up and there were fewer recaps, it held my interest far easier despite the same amount of distractions. I’m looking forward to the second book as I expect it to be less recap-filled and more focused on the story introduced in this book.

I have a couple comments with a pretty big spoiler for the end of this book:
Miranda and Caleb died at the end, so it was a pretty sad ending. I won’t miss Miranda; I found her irritating. I felt bad for Pug and Magnus though. I was sorry to see Caleb die because I liked his character even though we haven’t seen much of him lately. Unlike Nakor’s death in the previous book, these two deaths came as more of a surprise to me. I expected them to die eventually, I just wasn’t expecting it to happen right then. Of course, you never know when an apparently-dead character will show up again. However, this seems to be a continuation of the fulfillment of the warning Pug received many, many books ago (and that has been repeated in nearly every book since) that he’d have to watch everybody he cares about die. So I’m not really expecting any reversals and I am expecting more deaths.

I'm getting a teensy bit tired of how every series tells us that the things our characters thought were going on in the previous series weren’t actually what they thought. It seems like there’s always some new player who’s really manipulating everything, including manipulating the previous subseries’ new player who our characters incorrectly believed at that time was “really manipulating everything”. It’s getting to the point where I laugh every time it happens. :) I wonder who will really, really, really be manipulating everything by the end of the whole series! Maybe we’ll find out Pug has an evil twin. show less

If it feels like the end of a series ramping up for one gigantic blow-out bypassing some of the lesser dimensions of hell and driving a knife out of the fifth circle into our favorite realm... THEN IT IS.

Demons. A whole world of demons and dimensions rent of life. With nothing left but demons who suck the life force from everything... and then themselves... when they have nothing else to feed on.

Hello, new and powerful characters and parallel dimension elves who have been fighting a losing battle against demons for as long as they have history. :) Hello, references to the Chaos Wars. Hello, warlocks.

Need help? Come one, come all to the middle realm where the final battle of all realities is about to explode. :)

Poor Pug. I know he was show more prepared for this, but no one is really PREPARED for this, you know? show less

I'm not quite sure how to review this... I gave it three stars, but that's only because I'm extremely generous. It wasn't bad. It wasn't poorly written... It was just old. Talk about beating a dead horse! The world is in peril again? Oh my god! Demons are invading? Who would have guessed! Because that's a totally new scenario, nothing like that has ever happened before... But seriously. I love Mr. Feist, love him I tell you. He was one of my first fantasy authors, and he holds a very fond place in my heart. But you know what I would really enjoy? I would LOVE it if he moved on.. Created a new world, and new story. Midkemia is done, has been done for a long time. It's time to let it go.

All of that aside, it wasn't bad really. There was show more quite a lot of setup, and it moved pretty damn slow for the first 2/3 of the story. The ending picked up, but I wouldn't say I was on the edge of my seat. I'll read the next in the series, but I'm not dying to find out what happens. I'll just read it because I'm OCD like that and don't want to leave the series unfinished.

The good? It was well written. Several new characters were introduced, and they were well developed. Old characters were the same as ever, but it was still nice to see them again. And even though there was a lot I didn't remember from the other 86 trillion books set in Midkemia prior to this, I didn't really feel lost. I didn't feel completely sure of events they were referencing sometimes, but it could have been worse.

Overall... Two and a half (barely!) stars. show less