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A review by gmvader
Die Herren der Runen 6. Sturm über Indhopal. by David Farland
1.0
I wish I could tell the difference between when I have changed too much to appreciate an author’s writing and when the author has just diminished too much to be read any more.
I recall really enjoying the first four books of this series and found them to be exciting and phenomenal works of fantasy with brilliant consequences to the magic system that seemed to be missing in other works.
Then I read the precursor to this book and found it almost unbearably dull and poorly written.
Being a glutton for punishment — and slightly obsessive about finishing series once begun — I read this book.
I’m not sure where Farland is going with this. I get the idea from some of the writing advice he gives that he fancies himself a great writer of characters. Unfortunately this book is full of a series of character tropes with the thinnest of character traits.
It all starts when Fallion casts a super-powerful magic spell that makes his world collide with another one. The entire face of the world is changed as the two places merge and many people cease to exist, others join together with people from the other world and the landscape is completely shifted around to make some kind of approximation of the two worlds.
Fallion thinks he is completely in the right for doing this because, after all it is in the plot. Even though thousands, or maybe millions die because of it and it also brings super powerful giants that want to conquer everything as well as some kind of demons and monsters that kill people left and right.
Fallion is apparently incapable of caring about people.
What follows is a series of improbable adventures as we are told how tiny and delicate normal people are compared to the giants from the other world that are now everywhere followed by heroic battles where the normal sized people fight off the giants, demons and monsters and win the day because they are the heroes.
On the one hand I applaud Farland for being willing to destroy his world and make it into something else. That’s not always an easy thing to do. In fact, I believe that the story of the Lord of the Rings is the story of the breaking of Middle Earth. It is the story of the passing of magic from the world. I have to nod my head to David Farland for being one of the few authors that I’ve read who has figured that out and used that aspect in their fantasy. Most authors miss Tolkien completely and copy what they think they saw that they loved.
Farland isn’t copying anything, really, he’s just not a very good writer. Every scene feels awkward and underdeveloped. The descriptions are seldom rich enough for the scene to be fully imagined, the characters are seldom realized enough to have believable or understandable motivations, the people, magic, monsters, giants, worlds, demons, etc. have powers and ideas and abilities that vary with the convenience of the plot and the story. Monsters that are talked about by powerful mages as being scary beyond belief turn out to be susceptible to bright lights… sometimes.
The whole makes for a bit of a mess that feels like Farland is regressing in his skill rather than the opposite. I hesitate to go back and read the earlier ones that I loved so much. Perhaps they are not as good as I remembered. Perhaps I have outgrown this over-wrought poorly written story.
The question then remains. Will I finish the series? I don’t know. This was bad enough that I might not. Will the author finish the series? That remains to be seen as well.
I recall really enjoying the first four books of this series and found them to be exciting and phenomenal works of fantasy with brilliant consequences to the magic system that seemed to be missing in other works.
Then I read the precursor to this book and found it almost unbearably dull and poorly written.
Being a glutton for punishment — and slightly obsessive about finishing series once begun — I read this book.
I’m not sure where Farland is going with this. I get the idea from some of the writing advice he gives that he fancies himself a great writer of characters. Unfortunately this book is full of a series of character tropes with the thinnest of character traits.
It all starts when Fallion casts a super-powerful magic spell that makes his world collide with another one. The entire face of the world is changed as the two places merge and many people cease to exist, others join together with people from the other world and the landscape is completely shifted around to make some kind of approximation of the two worlds.
Fallion thinks he is completely in the right for doing this because, after all it is in the plot. Even though thousands, or maybe millions die because of it and it also brings super powerful giants that want to conquer everything as well as some kind of demons and monsters that kill people left and right.
Fallion is apparently incapable of caring about people.
What follows is a series of improbable adventures as we are told how tiny and delicate normal people are compared to the giants from the other world that are now everywhere followed by heroic battles where the normal sized people fight off the giants, demons and monsters and win the day because they are the heroes.
On the one hand I applaud Farland for being willing to destroy his world and make it into something else. That’s not always an easy thing to do. In fact, I believe that the story of the Lord of the Rings is the story of the breaking of Middle Earth. It is the story of the passing of magic from the world. I have to nod my head to David Farland for being one of the few authors that I’ve read who has figured that out and used that aspect in their fantasy. Most authors miss Tolkien completely and copy what they think they saw that they loved.
Farland isn’t copying anything, really, he’s just not a very good writer. Every scene feels awkward and underdeveloped. The descriptions are seldom rich enough for the scene to be fully imagined, the characters are seldom realized enough to have believable or understandable motivations, the people, magic, monsters, giants, worlds, demons, etc. have powers and ideas and abilities that vary with the convenience of the plot and the story. Monsters that are talked about by powerful mages as being scary beyond belief turn out to be susceptible to bright lights… sometimes.
The whole makes for a bit of a mess that feels like Farland is regressing in his skill rather than the opposite. I hesitate to go back and read the earlier ones that I loved so much. Perhaps they are not as good as I remembered. Perhaps I have outgrown this over-wrought poorly written story.
The question then remains. Will I finish the series? I don’t know. This was bad enough that I might not. Will the author finish the series? That remains to be seen as well.