Scan barcode
A review by acleary_1963
Blade of Dream by Daniel Abraham
4.0
Every author makes choices about their books and writing, and those choices are always going to have positives and negatives for various readers. I think Abraham executes the choices that he makes very well; it's that the choices he made aren't the right ones *for me*. So my rating kind of combines the fact that what he writes isn't really my favorite with my judgment that he's very good at what he does.
If you're read Abraham before, I'm not going to tell you something you don't know: he is not a plot driven author. He is much more interested in telling human stories that happen to be set in a somewhat fantasy setting that he is in telling a fantasy story that is populated by people. And that's great, but I find myself growing bored and a little disinterested after a while... There's only so much I need to know about the weather on a day to day basis in a story in which very little is happening. More story, less weather, at least for my taste.
But Abraham can certainly write some prose, from his worldbuilding descriptions (yes including the weather), to character development and inner voice, to philosophical nugget, the prose is rich in skill. I dabble a bit in writing and Abraham does in every paragraph what I mostly fail to do at all. But lost in that for me is much *more* than that. It's more form and less substance. You could summarize the actual plot points in the two books of this series in a pretty short paragraph I suspect. And even then, the plot isn't particularly interesting, and on the few occasions it does get interesting, if you take a moment and step back, those moments kind of seem to come out of nowhere, almost as if Abraham wanted to write a book that described a city and some characters and oh wait let's glom on some improbably things... "Gods" of some sort just form out of, umm, like people's thoughts or something, we don't need to be too clear about that. The crime boss just happens to have constructed some sort of mechanized subway under the river that comes in handy sort of during a climactic scene but this construction seems completely out of character with the rest of the state of technology in the world. Oh and no one ever noticed this tunnel, or leaked its secret. Throwing one lit lamp over a wall burns down an entire religious complex, even though as far as I can tell it's mostly made of stone. And if it isn't and can burn so easily, somehow never did over many, many years.
There's good stuff here and I've read these two books quickly end to end, so that means it passes the "I enjoy reading these test." I'll read the 3rd when it comes out. But if you're someone that loses patience quickly with a slowburn read, you probably ought to look elsewhere... Though that's my general impression of Abraham's work.
If you're read Abraham before, I'm not going to tell you something you don't know: he is not a plot driven author. He is much more interested in telling human stories that happen to be set in a somewhat fantasy setting that he is in telling a fantasy story that is populated by people. And that's great, but I find myself growing bored and a little disinterested after a while... There's only so much I need to know about the weather on a day to day basis in a story in which very little is happening. More story, less weather, at least for my taste.
But Abraham can certainly write some prose, from his worldbuilding descriptions (yes including the weather), to character development and inner voice, to philosophical nugget, the prose is rich in skill. I dabble a bit in writing and Abraham does in every paragraph what I mostly fail to do at all. But lost in that for me is much *more* than that. It's more form and less substance. You could summarize the actual plot points in the two books of this series in a pretty short paragraph I suspect. And even then, the plot isn't particularly interesting, and on the few occasions it does get interesting, if you take a moment and step back, those moments kind of seem to come out of nowhere, almost as if Abraham wanted to write a book that described a city and some characters and oh wait let's glom on some improbably things... "Gods" of some sort just form out of, umm, like people's thoughts or something, we don't need to be too clear about that. The crime boss just happens to have constructed some sort of mechanized subway under the river that comes in handy sort of during a climactic scene but this construction seems completely out of character with the rest of the state of technology in the world. Oh and no one ever noticed this tunnel, or leaked its secret. Throwing one lit lamp over a wall burns down an entire religious complex, even though as far as I can tell it's mostly made of stone. And if it isn't and can burn so easily, somehow never did over many, many years.
There's good stuff here and I've read these two books quickly end to end, so that means it passes the "I enjoy reading these test." I'll read the 3rd when it comes out. But if you're someone that loses patience quickly with a slowburn read, you probably ought to look elsewhere... Though that's my general impression of Abraham's work.