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nicki_in_nz's review against another edition
3.0
This could have been 4 stars, and it could have been 2. A good story and idea totally spoiled by excessive physical violence. I know there is frequently violence in fantasy tales, but this was often between the main heroic characters and it got repetitive and tedious. Hero beats up heroine, companions beat up hero, etc, etc, in various combinations. Honestly, the amount of beatings these people took I'm surprised they were still alive, let alone forgiving and loving each other. (Quite why they forgave and loved each other is beyond me.) It didn't make me like the hero or heroine much and at one point I was wondering if I could face finishing the book. The end was a bit better, hence the 3 stars, but I do feel a good idea was spoiled by unsympathetic main characters and unrealistic behaviour.
jrbournville's review against another edition
4.0
Slow in places, but an enjoyable read once it got going. I liked the balance between character personalities, and expect that other books in this series will build on the foundations which this one provided. This book is a good starting point for the series, answering some of the immediate questions whilst opening others up for a continued storyline.
leukippe's review
2.0
As might be expected from the score given, this isn't going to be the most positive of reviews. However, there certainly is some quality underlying the novel, and the promise shown is what has convinced me to put down a review, rather than simply leaving the book with two stars and no explanation: it deserves more than that; its author deserves more than that.
I'll speak to the book's best qualities first: the core conceit of this fantasy world is an interesting one; the overarching plot is pleasingly dynamic; the focus on short, eventful chapters keeps things going at an enjoyable fast-pace. I can honestly say that the book never bored me, and despite being a fair length, remained engaging to the end. Which, considering the issues I had with it, is a fairly impressive feat. No matter what else, S.F. Burgess has an excellent sense of pace.
However, for all that it gets right, there are some significant issues with the book that really brought my enjoyment down, issues which can be broadly broken down into two areas.
Firstly: the technical side of the book - the writing itself.
While there are a fair few typos and a couple of garbled sentences, those are issues easy to forgive, suggesting issues with the copy editing rather than authorial failure.
More problematic is the prose itself - though fortunately free of the purple prose that afflicts some writers, there are a few too many occasions where heavy repetition is in evidence - repeated use of the same adjectives and verbs within a short paragraph; repeated phrases and scenes throughout the novel itself (there are only so many times blades can be pressed to necks in a single reading before the concept begins to wear thin).
The dialogue throughout the books is a little too mono-voiced as well, with characters generally speaking in near-identical manner; there's also an odd aversion to characters ever using contractions in speech, even in otherwise urgent situations leading the voice conflicting with the tone of the moment.
None of this is damning - if anything, it speaks of a need for a stronger editorial voice, a core element to the success of many of the greatest writers. I am sure that with some more involved editing, more discussions with S.F. Burgess during the writing process about maybe slightly changing a sentence here, altering a scene there; just something to flag up these niggling issues and the prose would flow that much more beautifully, making the book that much more pleasurable to read.
The second major issue for me is the more significant one, however, and it's the issue of characterisation. There are, again, a few aspects to this that impinged upon my enjoyment of the book.
A minor part of this is, again, the lack of a distinct voice for the different characters, but I believe that belongs more in the technical issues. No, more problematic is the characters themselves.
The characters are, to put it mildly, volatile. They swing from one extreme of personality to another with nary a backwards glance. Humans are indeed complicated creatures, and characters with schizophrenic personalities can be incredibly effectively used (Jorg of Mark Lawrence's The Broken Empire trilogy is a fantastic example of this), but an entire cast of see-sawing personalities is hard to get a hold of, and in this case the personality swings didn't make the characters feel like they were complex individuals; instead, they just felt muddled, confused in their actual creation, lacking in definition; their extreme reactions to situations feeling like contrived attempts to drum up drama.
This was compounded by an unfortunate narrative tendency to rely on the protagonists' stupidity to lead to dramatic situations, which combined with the extreme mood- and behaviour-shifts of the main characters to make The Five feel less like a force of noble, conflicted heroes, and more like a group of particularly troubled teenagers, hormones flying everywhere and all control lost. Which, when the group is meant to consist of one hard-bitten rebel, three veteran members of the military and emergency services, and one sole teenager (and she at the very end of the teenage spectrum), does feel a little off.
I should also mention that I did find the sympathy within the narrative for violent relationships (romantic or otherwise) a little unpleasant, as the book seemed to go out of its way to paint the characters involved as extremely pleasant otherwise, and to suggest that their constant apologies following their moments of violence made up for their repeated transgressions. That's not necessarily an issue of poor characterisation of course, just something that rubbed me the wrong way in the narrative.
Aside from that aspect, however, I am confident that these niggles can be ironed out: as already stated, a major part of the technical issues I would put down more to editing (or lack thereof) than inherent issues with the writing. As for the issues of characterisation, that is something I fully expect to fade with experience: improved skill at defining characters and imbuing them with distinct voices is sure to come with practice.
As such, while I was disappointed by the book, I am genuinely looking forward to seeing S.F. Burgess's future works. The prospect of future works with the drive and pace of Eleanor, with a little bit more tightening of the prose itself, and imbued with greater coherence of character, would be quite the thing.
I'll speak to the book's best qualities first: the core conceit of this fantasy world is an interesting one; the overarching plot is pleasingly dynamic; the focus on short, eventful chapters keeps things going at an enjoyable fast-pace. I can honestly say that the book never bored me, and despite being a fair length, remained engaging to the end. Which, considering the issues I had with it, is a fairly impressive feat. No matter what else, S.F. Burgess has an excellent sense of pace.
However, for all that it gets right, there are some significant issues with the book that really brought my enjoyment down, issues which can be broadly broken down into two areas.
Firstly: the technical side of the book - the writing itself.
While there are a fair few typos and a couple of garbled sentences, those are issues easy to forgive, suggesting issues with the copy editing rather than authorial failure.
More problematic is the prose itself - though fortunately free of the purple prose that afflicts some writers, there are a few too many occasions where heavy repetition is in evidence - repeated use of the same adjectives and verbs within a short paragraph; repeated phrases and scenes throughout the novel itself (there are only so many times blades can be pressed to necks in a single reading before the concept begins to wear thin).
The dialogue throughout the books is a little too mono-voiced as well, with characters generally speaking in near-identical manner; there's also an odd aversion to characters ever using contractions in speech, even in otherwise urgent situations leading the voice conflicting with the tone of the moment.
None of this is damning - if anything, it speaks of a need for a stronger editorial voice, a core element to the success of many of the greatest writers. I am sure that with some more involved editing, more discussions with S.F. Burgess during the writing process about maybe slightly changing a sentence here, altering a scene there; just something to flag up these niggling issues and the prose would flow that much more beautifully, making the book that much more pleasurable to read.
The second major issue for me is the more significant one, however, and it's the issue of characterisation. There are, again, a few aspects to this that impinged upon my enjoyment of the book.
A minor part of this is, again, the lack of a distinct voice for the different characters, but I believe that belongs more in the technical issues. No, more problematic is the characters themselves.
The characters are, to put it mildly, volatile. They swing from one extreme of personality to another with nary a backwards glance. Humans are indeed complicated creatures, and characters with schizophrenic personalities can be incredibly effectively used (Jorg of Mark Lawrence's The Broken Empire trilogy is a fantastic example of this), but an entire cast of see-sawing personalities is hard to get a hold of, and in this case the personality swings didn't make the characters feel like they were complex individuals; instead, they just felt muddled, confused in their actual creation, lacking in definition; their extreme reactions to situations feeling like contrived attempts to drum up drama.
This was compounded by an unfortunate narrative tendency to rely on the protagonists' stupidity to lead to dramatic situations, which combined with the extreme mood- and behaviour-shifts of the main characters to make The Five feel less like a force of noble, conflicted heroes, and more like a group of particularly troubled teenagers, hormones flying everywhere and all control lost. Which, when the group is meant to consist of one hard-bitten rebel, three veteran members of the military and emergency services, and one sole teenager (and she at the very end of the teenage spectrum), does feel a little off.
I should also mention that I did find the sympathy within the narrative for violent relationships (romantic or otherwise) a little unpleasant, as the book seemed to go out of its way to paint the characters involved as extremely pleasant otherwise, and to suggest that their constant apologies following their moments of violence made up for their repeated transgressions. That's not necessarily an issue of poor characterisation of course, just something that rubbed me the wrong way in the narrative.
Aside from that aspect, however, I am confident that these niggles can be ironed out: as already stated, a major part of the technical issues I would put down more to editing (or lack thereof) than inherent issues with the writing. As for the issues of characterisation, that is something I fully expect to fade with experience: improved skill at defining characters and imbuing them with distinct voices is sure to come with practice.
As such, while I was disappointed by the book, I am genuinely looking forward to seeing S.F. Burgess's future works. The prospect of future works with the drive and pace of Eleanor, with a little bit more tightening of the prose itself, and imbued with greater coherence of character, would be quite the thing.
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