Shadow of a Dark Queen

The basic story: a bunch of desperate men are dragooned, like a fantasy Dirty Dozen, for a dangerous mission into a strange land to try to save the world. Sailing from the Europe-esque fantasy setting where most of Feist's novels are set to an India-esque continent, the band of desperate men sneak, fight and spy their way across a war-torn continent in search of information that can save their land from a coming apocalypse.

I hadn't read this since I was a child. It holds up well as an adult — nothing special, but delightfully fun. The writing is competent, the worldbuilding thorough (if intentionally derivative of Earth), the characters interesting (if not compelling). This first book is largely setup for the later series; I recall show more loving the mercantile scheming of the sequel and the epic battles of the final two novels more than this first one. (I may in fact have read Book 2 before Book 1, since I was a terrible person as a child.) There are better fantasy novelists out there than Raymond E. Feist, but you don't need every book you read to be a genre-shaking revolution. These books are just plain fun. show less

Shadow of a Dark Queen is the first book in yet another subseries of Raymond E. Feist’s very long Riftwar Cycle. This is one of the two remaining subseries that I had previously read, and it’s the one I remembered least favorably, but I actually enjoyed this book quite a bit this time around. I remembered very little from the story, but I did remember some of the things I didn’t like about it the first time, and I think having different expectations helped.

This is the first book where the main characters aren’t related to the royal family, although we do see some traces of them on rare occasions. A lot of time passes between the various subseries, introducing us to new generations each time as our old favorites become older and show more sometimes die, and I had some frustrations with that the first time I read these books. I enjoyed the newer characters the first time too, but I was very attached to the characters from the first subseries and I missed them. Knowing that was coming, I think I’ve been less bothered by it this time around. Feist continues to do a great job of writing characters the reader can care about, and I do think his writing has improved and become more polished as compared to those earlier books.

Some comments for the spoiler tags. One of these contains a spoiler for later in this subseries, not just this book.
I had forgotten Nakor was in this subseries, so that was a nice surprise!

The first time I read this, when we learned that an elderly Arutha had died of complications from a broken hip, off the page, I was so annoyed! This time I braced myself for it and just moved on. He had to die eventually given how much time was passing, but I think I was annoyed about not getting to spend a little more time with my favorite character before it happened. I might have tolerated it better if he’d had a more heroic death like Jimmy gets later in the subseries. Yes, those are essentially the only things I remembered about this subseries 20+ years later: Arutha dies boringly. Jimmy dies heroically. Oh, and there were some other characters too that did stuff. Actually, I did remember Erik and Roo a bit, and some of the early parts of the story started coming back to me a little bit in advance of things happening.

We almost made it an entire book without a romance, but he just had to throw the beginnings of one in there at the end! :) At least he seems to have repented of his insta-lovey ways. show less

Weirdly, this might be my least favorite fantasy by Feist. I'm usually quite happy with them. Interesting characters, great locations, solid adventures, great plots. And generally, the worldbuilding is something quite good.

So what happened here? A confluence of factors that may not bother other people but firmly set me down into a camp of 'I don't care'. Maybe I was kinda disappointed with Erik. It started out fairly interesting and I kinda hoped it would go the standard direction of a hidden prince, but after the rape, murder, run and capture, I think I just started wondering where the rest of the tale could go.

Mercenaries. Secret missions. ... Well, it could have been pretty cool.

Unfortunately, I just wasn't all that interested. The show more amassing army, the somewhat inconsequential cameos of characters I did love, and the primary action did little to spark my interest. Much. I wanted to like it more than I did. I mean, after the previous two novels, I was pretty much riding high. To jump forward in time this much to the point where the king dies, however? I guess I got pretty bummed.

This won't be stopping me from continuing the series, but I will be hoping for more, later. show less

Set about a generation or so after the original Riftwar books, this is the start of an even wider ranging series. Erik von Darkmoor and his village friend Rupert (Roo) Avery find themselves in seriously hot water when Erik's half-brother dies after raping a local girl - Erik being the local lord's bastard had always made his life hard but this time Erik and Roo find themselves at the wrong end of a rope after they thought they'd escaped from Erik's brother. Instead they found themselves inducted into a special squad of soldiers being trained by Calis, son of Tomas and the Elven Queen. Very hard training with lethal consequences for failure - the nooses round the trainees' necks weren't there for show!

The action steps up a gear when the show more squad goes to the continent of Novindus where there is a vast army on the move. This set of books has some of the bloodiest battles in the whole of the Midkemian oeuvre though in this one, we get a relatively gentle introduction, though some of the scenes set in the village are fairly unpleasant as well. In a way, it's good to see that Feist can deliver a really bloody series of actions. show less

Deze serie van Feist is nog steeds leuk, maar minder interessant dan de Keizerrijk-serie.

De karakters van Eric en Ru zijn echt heel leuk en zorgen ervoor dat je door blijft lezen. De plot is nog steeds leuk, maar is af en toe wel erg ver gezocht. Neemt niet weg dat het een boek is dat ik met plezier heb (her)gelezen.

I read another book by this author and wasn't impressed. That one was more of a modern-day fantasy. This book is more typical medieval world with magic and aliens and portals.

The world building is interesting, with a lot of different things packed into it. This is book one in the series, that actually picks up some time after a previous series. I didn't read any of those, but that didn't make a difference for this book.

The characters were interesting. You mainly follow Erik a young blacksmith's apprentice and bastard son of the baron. He and his friend accidently kill the baron's son and are sentenced to death. They escape the death sentence and are recruited on a special mission with the promise of being free men if they survive. I show more can't remember the name of the movie set in WWII with this premise.

The book ends with various survivors going their separate ways, but it's clear that the threat has only been delayed, not eradicated. If I had other books in the series, I would read them, but I own far too many books and I am trying hard not to buy any more, at least not until I get a bunch more out of the house.

I do have some in the prequel series, so I'll be moving onto those. show less

Met 'De schaduw van een duistere koningin' is weer een nieuwe saga begonnen in de wereld van Feist. Een nieuwe saga met oude vijanden, en ook een paar oude bekende. Puc en Tomas laten zich even zien, maar behalve op het eind spelen zij geen grote rol. Gevuld met voldoende actie, en weer eens een 'held' waarmee ik me kon identificeren.

Het verhaal speelt zich tientallen jaren na de riftwar-saga af, en is weer een lekker te lezen verhaal.

De hoofdrolspelers (Eric en Ru) zijn beide veroordeeld tot de strop, maar krijgen een kans om zich aan te sluiten bij een speciale legereenheid dat uiteindelijk op een soort zelfmoord-missie vertrekt, naar Novindus om te voorkomen dat de Slangenkoningin de wereld overneemt. Want als ze slaagt, zal alle show more leven in de wereld van Midkemia op houden te bestaan.

Hoewel Eric van Zwartheide de hoofdrolspeler is in dit verhaal, draait het eigenlijk niet echt om hem, maar zien we de gebeurtenissen door zijn ogen.

We zien de karakters Erik en Ru groeien van dorpsjongens naar mannen. Ook andere karakters maakten een groei mee.

Omdat dit verhaal zo'n 60 jaar na de riftwar-cycles speelt, zijn verschillende hoofdrolspelers van toen intussen overleden, maar er is nog genoeg binding met de oorspronkelijke verhaallijnen. Arutha en Lyam zijn overleden, Puc leeft nog, ergens verstopt op de Sterrenwerf en speelt een nog een rol in het verhaal. Ook Tomas is nog aanwezig, maar speelt een heel bescheiden rolletje.

Op naar het volgende deel: De macht van een koopmansprins.

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