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A review by calypte
Black Trillium by Marion Zimmer Bradley
1.0
This book has one of the worst openings of any I've ever read. Every single thing the most basic writing advice would tell you to avoid is here: lengthy fantasy descriptions of places with silly names, written in a stilted, oh-so-fake, 'stylised' tone, giving you history for things you have yet to have any reason to care about. Paragraphs half a page long. Zero action.
Then - eventually! - we get to our main characters being born. Triplet princesses, each with different hair colours (!), each with such one-dimensional personalities it's painful. Eventually they get sent out on individual - but part of the whole, natch - quests, trying to save their kingdom from the evil invaders.
I struggled, really struggled, to get past the awful opening, only to fall into very bland, very cliched, fantasy fare. From about halfway through it's just 'meh', rather than awful, but that's not enough to make it even vaguely worth the bleeding eyeballs of the opening chapter.
Then - eventually! - we get to our main characters being born. Triplet princesses, each with different hair colours (!), each with such one-dimensional personalities it's painful. Eventually they get sent out on individual - but part of the whole, natch - quests, trying to save their kingdom from the evil invaders.
I struggled, really struggled, to get past the awful opening, only to fall into very bland, very cliched, fantasy fare. From about halfway through it's just 'meh', rather than awful, but that's not enough to make it even vaguely worth the bleeding eyeballs of the opening chapter.