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osborne2read's review
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
blodeuedd's review
3.0
My thoughts:
This was one big book of fights, I will tell you that at once. What a gang, I honestly thought they would kill someone in their own group, but it was also very amusing to read. I am taking a step back to explain.
Lenk is the leader, a young man with a sword and a voice in his head. What is going on? Is he loosing it? He started to really intrigue me after a while and when it ended I did want more of him. Other interesting characters include; Kataria, a warrior woman who hates humans and calls them monkeys. There is also some tension between her and Lenk, either they will kill each other or get it on. And I sure hope it will be the latter. Another one of the adventures (they are even worse thought of than mercenaries, so bad people here), is Gariath, a dragon man who can crush a man's skull with his foot. There is also a wizard, a skulking rogue and woman named Asper who is a healer and who follows them to learn to use her craft. There you have, a mismatched crew who only wants money, while some wants money and to kill. But they are so strange that you have to like them.
The whole book starts with an almost 200 pages long battle, yes I am not joking. I do confess that it was hard at times to get into the book because of this long battle, but there was always something there making me continue. And the more I read the more I got into this book. Because he always manages to surprise me, there are frogmen, purple women, and screaming mermaids. Always something interesting.
As for the story it's about the hunt for the tome that has been stolen. This book can open a gate and demons will get out and tear the world asunder. They must get it back and while doing it they will meet a lot of dangers, a lot of fights, creepy demons, and a lot of great tension since they all get so angry. And that is a good thing.
Conclusion:
Interesting fantasy that is not afraid to try something strange. It will surprise you and make you wonder. And at the end you will want more if you are as curious as I am. It might not end with a total cliffhanger, but the world is by no means saved.
Rating:
Interesting
This was one big book of fights, I will tell you that at once. What a gang, I honestly thought they would kill someone in their own group, but it was also very amusing to read. I am taking a step back to explain.
Lenk is the leader, a young man with a sword and a voice in his head. What is going on? Is he loosing it? He started to really intrigue me after a while and when it ended I did want more of him. Other interesting characters include; Kataria, a warrior woman who hates humans and calls them monkeys. There is also some tension between her and Lenk, either they will kill each other or get it on. And I sure hope it will be the latter. Another one of the adventures (they are even worse thought of than mercenaries, so bad people here), is Gariath, a dragon man who can crush a man's skull with his foot. There is also a wizard, a skulking rogue and woman named Asper who is a healer and who follows them to learn to use her craft. There you have, a mismatched crew who only wants money, while some wants money and to kill. But they are so strange that you have to like them.
The whole book starts with an almost 200 pages long battle, yes I am not joking. I do confess that it was hard at times to get into the book because of this long battle, but there was always something there making me continue. And the more I read the more I got into this book. Because he always manages to surprise me, there are frogmen, purple women, and screaming mermaids. Always something interesting.
As for the story it's about the hunt for the tome that has been stolen. This book can open a gate and demons will get out and tear the world asunder. They must get it back and while doing it they will meet a lot of dangers, a lot of fights, creepy demons, and a lot of great tension since they all get so angry. And that is a good thing.
Conclusion:
Interesting fantasy that is not afraid to try something strange. It will surprise you and make you wonder. And at the end you will want more if you are as curious as I am. It might not end with a total cliffhanger, but the world is by no means saved.
Rating:
Interesting
moatzilla's review
4.0
"Hold that thought. This sounds like the kind of conversation I'll need pants for."
OMG, where to begin? The dialog in this book is beyond compare. It's so fantastic that I basically just live-tweeted the blow-by-blows of the entire book. It started with one quote at the beginning and just kept going. It's hard to pick a favorite quote when they're all so good. The humor leans heavily to the toilet side, which just made me giggle all the more.
The exposition is a little lacking (probably to make room for the fantastic dialog). It was a little hard to follow the pace at times, however I can say from experience (after beginning it, losing the book, finding it and jumping straight back in after several months) that you really don't need to know what's going on to enjoy it thoroughly. In fact, I think it only gets better when you just sit down and enjoy the ride. I'm usually more of a fan of 'show' vs. 'tell' in my books, but I'll happily make an exception for this.
My only gripes (minor though they are) fell into the realm of character development. The book jumps into the middle of the story and just keeps on going. While it hooked me with the writing, I reached the end a little disappointed not to know more about the individual characters and their motivations. They are developed enough to be defined separate entities, but they are more like preliminary sketches at this stage, not yet come into their own. Gripes aside, I'm really looking forward to reading more and seeing where they go from here.
Long story short: Read if you want to laugh your ass off. Overlook the debut novel tripping hazards (every favorite author has them) and strap in for the time of your life.
OMG, where to begin? The dialog in this book is beyond compare. It's so fantastic that I basically just live-tweeted the blow-by-blows of the entire book. It started with one quote at the beginning and just kept going. It's hard to pick a favorite quote when they're all so good. The humor leans heavily to the toilet side, which just made me giggle all the more.
The exposition is a little lacking (probably to make room for the fantastic dialog). It was a little hard to follow the pace at times, however I can say from experience (after beginning it, losing the book, finding it and jumping straight back in after several months) that you really don't need to know what's going on to enjoy it thoroughly. In fact, I think it only gets better when you just sit down and enjoy the ride. I'm usually more of a fan of 'show' vs. 'tell' in my books, but I'll happily make an exception for this.
My only gripes (minor though they are) fell into the realm of character development. The book jumps into the middle of the story and just keeps on going. While it hooked me with the writing, I reached the end a little disappointed not to know more about the individual characters and their motivations. They are developed enough to be defined separate entities, but they are more like preliminary sketches at this stage, not yet come into their own. Gripes aside, I'm really looking forward to reading more and seeing where they go from here.
Long story short: Read if you want to laugh your ass off. Overlook the debut novel tripping hazards (every favorite author has them) and strap in for the time of your life.
marktimmony's review
3.0
I had a love/hate relationship with this book.
On one hand Sykes does a fantastic job with language. On the other he uses - to my mind and preference - way too many modern colloquialisms for a fantasy novel. And his characters would speak with a a vocabulary that suggests they all have had extensive educations. All of them.
That being said, the story is intriguing and it really has a lot of potential - I LOVED the final scene. WOW.
Will definitely be reading the next book.
On one hand Sykes does a fantastic job with language. On the other he uses - to my mind and preference - way too many modern colloquialisms for a fantasy novel. And his characters would speak with a a vocabulary that suggests they all have had extensive educations. All of them.
That being said, the story is intriguing and it really has a lot of potential - I LOVED the final scene. WOW.
Will definitely be reading the next book.
red_sagwa's review
2.0
A kind of like the characters, but the story not so much… In summary: big fight, little trip in boat, another big fight… and discussions, The End. I don’t think that 500 pages and more were necessary for this story…
jameseckman's review
1.0
The characters in this are unlikable and dysfunctional, I couldn't finish it.
megandawn's review
3.0
(Re-posted from http://theturnedbrain.blogspot.com)
You can’t help but admire an author with the audacity to open a book with an almost 200 page battle scene. No, that wasn’t a typo. The sprawling fight that opens Sam Sykes’ ‘Tome of the Undergates’ is as long as some novellas. It takes a certain kind of chutzpah to ignore the rules like that, and I tip my hate to Mr. Sykes for it.
In fact, I tip my hate twice, because unconventional as the opening was, I enjoyed every second of it. This surprised me, because I have a tendency to skim over fight scenes in books, even when I’m already attached to the characters. But Syke’s prose is crisp and tempered with a unique kind of humour that my interest was held from the get go, even though my investment in his characters was zero. I actually really liked the way each character was introduced mid fight. It was a change from how these things are normally done, and watching how each adventurer reacted to life threatening danger provided deep insight into them right from the get go.
Sykes' characters are definitely on the Abercrombie end of the Tolkien/Abercrombie character morality scale. I wouldn’t say unlikable, although plenty of people have, but certainly they have their flaws. It might be because they all claim to hate each other so much that their worst traits keep showing up, or maybe it’s just because they’re adventurers. Still, I found there was something to like in each of them, which stopped all their bad sides from being too much. On the downside I would have liked to see more character growth as the book progressed. They went from hating each other to…. Still hating each other. From being happy to let each other die to… Being happy to let each other die. Plus, man, the self pity! They hate each other, they hate themselves, come on guys! It’s not all bad!
Enough about them, let’s talk plot. The book opens at a hurtling pace and continues on that way. There are no pauses to let the reader no what’s going, you have to figure it out for yourself. Which might bug some people, but I am a fan of working shit out for myself. So, we have a team of adventurers (who rank somewhere below cockroaches in this universe) who are on a ship providing protection to some priestly fellow and his tome. Or should I say Tome with a capital 'T,' because this is one important book. The ship is best by adversaries, the Tome is stolen, and the adventurers must retrieve it against all odds. Now there’s nothing wrong with a simple plot, but I think ‘Tome of the Undergates’ was too simple. Some obstacles or complication to the adventurer’s quest would have been welcome.
Furthermore, while I hugely enjoyed the action filled opening to the book, once that battle ended and the gang set off in search of the Tome my enjoyment began to slip. Sykes handles scenes of high action extremely well, but he seems lost when it came to quieter, more introspective moments. It seemed a bit like the characters were just standing around, waiting for the next fight start. Instead of skimming the battles, I found myself skimming all the stuff between battles, which was certainly a first for me. Overall the book felt like fight scenes linked by filler, like a d-grade action movie.
Honestly, I think if I hadn’t enjoyed the actual style of Sykes’s prose so much I would have given up on this one. There’s a really unique, almost visceral quality to the way he writes, and an almost total lack of clichés. Plus, and I know I mentioned this earlier but I’ll say it again for emphasis, Sam Sykes is wicked funny. Every sentence drips with cynical humour, but the it never comes across as too joke heavy. It’s an overall air of cleverness, instead of joke after joke.
I will give the next book in this series, ‘Black Halo’ a try. I feel like even though ‘Tome of the Undergates’ may have neglected character growth and plot, there is real potential there. And if nothing else I know it will be written with style.
You can’t help but admire an author with the audacity to open a book with an almost 200 page battle scene. No, that wasn’t a typo. The sprawling fight that opens Sam Sykes’ ‘Tome of the Undergates’ is as long as some novellas. It takes a certain kind of chutzpah to ignore the rules like that, and I tip my hate to Mr. Sykes for it.
In fact, I tip my hate twice, because unconventional as the opening was, I enjoyed every second of it. This surprised me, because I have a tendency to skim over fight scenes in books, even when I’m already attached to the characters. But Syke’s prose is crisp and tempered with a unique kind of humour that my interest was held from the get go, even though my investment in his characters was zero. I actually really liked the way each character was introduced mid fight. It was a change from how these things are normally done, and watching how each adventurer reacted to life threatening danger provided deep insight into them right from the get go.
Sykes' characters are definitely on the Abercrombie end of the Tolkien/Abercrombie character morality scale. I wouldn’t say unlikable, although plenty of people have, but certainly they have their flaws. It might be because they all claim to hate each other so much that their worst traits keep showing up, or maybe it’s just because they’re adventurers. Still, I found there was something to like in each of them, which stopped all their bad sides from being too much. On the downside I would have liked to see more character growth as the book progressed. They went from hating each other to…. Still hating each other. From being happy to let each other die to… Being happy to let each other die. Plus, man, the self pity! They hate each other, they hate themselves, come on guys! It’s not all bad!
Enough about them, let’s talk plot. The book opens at a hurtling pace and continues on that way. There are no pauses to let the reader no what’s going, you have to figure it out for yourself. Which might bug some people, but I am a fan of working shit out for myself. So, we have a team of adventurers (who rank somewhere below cockroaches in this universe) who are on a ship providing protection to some priestly fellow and his tome. Or should I say Tome with a capital 'T,' because this is one important book. The ship is best by adversaries, the Tome is stolen, and the adventurers must retrieve it against all odds. Now there’s nothing wrong with a simple plot, but I think ‘Tome of the Undergates’ was too simple. Some obstacles or complication to the adventurer’s quest would have been welcome.
Furthermore, while I hugely enjoyed the action filled opening to the book, once that battle ended and the gang set off in search of the Tome my enjoyment began to slip. Sykes handles scenes of high action extremely well, but he seems lost when it came to quieter, more introspective moments. It seemed a bit like the characters were just standing around, waiting for the next fight start. Instead of skimming the battles, I found myself skimming all the stuff between battles, which was certainly a first for me. Overall the book felt like fight scenes linked by filler, like a d-grade action movie.
Honestly, I think if I hadn’t enjoyed the actual style of Sykes’s prose so much I would have given up on this one. There’s a really unique, almost visceral quality to the way he writes, and an almost total lack of clichés. Plus, and I know I mentioned this earlier but I’ll say it again for emphasis, Sam Sykes is wicked funny. Every sentence drips with cynical humour, but the it never comes across as too joke heavy. It’s an overall air of cleverness, instead of joke after joke.
I will give the next book in this series, ‘Black Halo’ a try. I feel like even though ‘Tome of the Undergates’ may have neglected character growth and plot, there is real potential there. And if nothing else I know it will be written with style.
tachyondecay's review
Sam Sykes drops us off very much in media res in Tome of the Undergates. Often I love that kind of thing—exposition is for chumps! But as with my experience with An Ember in the Ashes, perhaps trying to read this just after Desert Bus for Hope was a bad idea. Or perhaps it was having an antihero as a protagonist.
This reminds me a great deal of Best Served Cold. I can see the appeal of this book; I can see why people would enjoy it. There are definitely elements to it that I enjoyed a great deal. But the way Sykes handles the ensemble cast, combined with not feeling all that invested in this quest that they're on, means that I ultimately didn’t care much for it.
Would I come back to it in the future? Maybe. At this point, though, I want to be reading books I really want to finish, not books I think I should finish.
This reminds me a great deal of Best Served Cold. I can see the appeal of this book; I can see why people would enjoy it. There are definitely elements to it that I enjoyed a great deal. But the way Sykes handles the ensemble cast, combined with not feeling all that invested in this quest that they're on, means that I ultimately didn’t care much for it.
Would I come back to it in the future? Maybe. At this point, though, I want to be reading books I really want to finish, not books I think I should finish.
wyvernfriend's review
3.0
Didn't really keep me reading, I was quite willing, several times, to walk away. It's not a terrible read, but I just didn't care about what happened to the characters and didn't really care if they survived or not.
It's a story about a group of mismatched adventurers who are caught up in the hunt for a mysterious tome which is bringing them into contact with some of the powers of the world (one of the characters keeps talking about how there aren't gods, so I'm using powers, cause it's not clear what these folk are). I occasionally got confused about who amongst the extended characters was who.
Also, unless it's a race attribute, hairless legs aren't a gender sign, they're a sign of societal expectations in the 20th and 21st Western Society, and while, yes, women warriors who go barelegged may remove hair, it would be more akin to cyclists today who do the same to try to prevent infection. You can't tell gender from bare legs, hair length or whether or not they wore skirts (let me introduce you to some ancient greeks...)
Overall, not terrible, but didn't engage me and while I'm vaguely interested in reading the sequels, I'm not rushing out to check if it's in stock in work, and I'm definitely not hunting for it to buy.
It's a story about a group of mismatched adventurers who are caught up in the hunt for a mysterious tome which is bringing them into contact with some of the powers of the world (one of the characters keeps talking about how there aren't gods, so I'm using powers, cause it's not clear what these folk are). I occasionally got confused about who amongst the extended characters was who.
Also, unless it's a race attribute, hairless legs aren't a gender sign, they're a sign of societal expectations in the 20th and 21st Western Society, and while, yes, women warriors who go barelegged may remove hair, it would be more akin to cyclists today who do the same to try to prevent infection. You can't tell gender from bare legs, hair length or whether or not they wore skirts (let me introduce you to some ancient greeks...)
Overall, not terrible, but didn't engage me and while I'm vaguely interested in reading the sequels, I'm not rushing out to check if it's in stock in work, and I'm definitely not hunting for it to buy.
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