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A review by nuevecuervos
The Weavers of Saramyr by Chris Wooding
1.0
I read this book some years ago on the recommendation of some website or another based on my enjoyment of fantasy and scifi books, and I'm sorry to say that I really disliked it. I had already ordered the second book in the series and I ended up paperbackswapping them both away before I even bothered reading the second.
It's serviceable enough to some extent, though somewhat flat, and the plot is extremely creative at times, but my main bitch is and will remain that it suffers from the Bad Guy is So Bad, omfg. So Bad. They are SO BAD that they rape, torture and murder children, and that's how you can tell they're irredeemably evil.
No, I'm neither kidding nor exaggerating; this is a main plot point, regularly visited when we visit the bad guy. If this is triggering and bothers you, I apologize, but that's also good, because that means you haven't yet read this book, and really should not.
I can handle that bad things happen; hell, I enjoy ASOIF (or perhaps it's stockholm syndrome at this point, but that's beside the point). What I despise deeply about this book is that the brutal rape and murder of children is used as a device to show you PRECISELY JUST HOW BAD OMG SO BAD this guy is. Listen, if you as an author have to rely on what is generally considered beyond the fucking pale to let us know your bad guys are bad, you are pointedly NOT doing a very good job of characterization otherwise. It really is cartoonishly terrible, if you can apply a label of 'cartoonish' to the atrocities we're discussing here. I understand this was the author's first foray into the world of adult fiction (versus YA) and I don't know if he was swinging heavily into taboo territory to make clear that he was really hard-hitting, and I don't care. It's lazy and poorly done.
It's serviceable enough to some extent, though somewhat flat, and the plot is extremely creative at times, but my main bitch is and will remain that it suffers from the Bad Guy is So Bad, omfg. So Bad. They are SO BAD that they rape, torture and murder children, and that's how you can tell they're irredeemably evil.
No, I'm neither kidding nor exaggerating; this is a main plot point, regularly visited when we visit the bad guy. If this is triggering and bothers you, I apologize, but that's also good, because that means you haven't yet read this book, and really should not.
I can handle that bad things happen; hell, I enjoy ASOIF (or perhaps it's stockholm syndrome at this point, but that's beside the point). What I despise deeply about this book is that the brutal rape and murder of children is used as a device to show you PRECISELY JUST HOW BAD OMG SO BAD this guy is. Listen, if you as an author have to rely on what is generally considered beyond the fucking pale to let us know your bad guys are bad, you are pointedly NOT doing a very good job of characterization otherwise. It really is cartoonishly terrible, if you can apply a label of 'cartoonish' to the atrocities we're discussing here. I understand this was the author's first foray into the world of adult fiction (versus YA) and I don't know if he was swinging heavily into taboo territory to make clear that he was really hard-hitting, and I don't care. It's lazy and poorly done.