Customer Reviews

Convergence: Book One of The Blending

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I bought this book last spring because I wanted to read something by someone I had never heard of and because Tom Canty is one of my favourite cover artists. I ended up getting the remaining four books in the series from the library because I wanted to know what happened, but I personally wouldn't recommend buying them.

This book, and the series, seems to have been designed around its structure. In the world in question, there are five major magical talents -- thus there are five main characters, five books in the series and so forth. While Green does a good job delineating the characters, she is less successful varying their experiences. Throughout the series it seems that she has applied one experiential template to every character; the tests and challenges they face are so infuriatingly similar that you could get a pretty good idea of the entire books by reading a fifth of it. Likewise, while they all have fears and flaws that are sensitively described, there is something very much the same about all of them and the characters' reactions to them. By the end it doesn't really matter whether the difficulty comes from family or from business associates or what.

A great deal of the plot seems to rely on miscommunication between the characters. While this is believable at the onset, it becomes less so as the story progresses until I, at least, just wanted to hurt someone. To me it seemed like Green went out of her way to make people stupider than any adult has a right to be.

The first book starts with a cutesy narration that continues between every chapter. It appears less and less often as the book and the series progress, but I could have done without it entirely.

The strength of the book/series comes when Green stops treating her characters as individuals and focuses on how they function as a unit, "Blending" in her terminology. Unfortunately this happens all too seldom to keep the story interesting to a thoughtful reader. I'd suggest that if you want to read an author who dwells on the subjects' personal problems but can still handle a moving plot, you turn to Mercedes Lackey instead.

I will never read a Harlequin romance novel and yet, somehow I got hooked on this novel which in many respects fits the romance category almost as strongly as the fantasy genre.

In a nutshell, five talented individuals are brought together as applicants for high practitioner of their "aspect". An "aspect" is the area that an individual can influence through mental concentration. Convergeance introduces the 5 aspects of Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Spirit.

Each year, those individuals with strong affinities for an aspect are required to go to the capital to test their strength. Every 25 years, "blendings" of 5 talents can compete to become the rulers of the nation. No one really knows what happens to those who fail.

Green introduces each character, brings them together for a chapter or two, and then describes their struggles and testing. While sometimes repetitive, I found Green's technique rather comfortable and enjoyable as I watched each character deal with the same types of problems in subtly different ways. Then she brings the characters back in touch with each other again so that they can compare notes and interact in friendship and intimacy.

Quite an endearing book. You may want to make sure that you have the second novel handy as you near the end of Convergeance (Book 2 is called Competitions), because Green leaves you hanging.

And of course therein lies the problem. This book is a very compelling read, as is the second, even though the idea is a little cliched. The story of 5 talents meeting and being drawn into a group is interesting, and I managed to ignore most of the writing problems in this first book(the sex scenes were pretty bad though)I even dashed off to the bookstore after reading the first 2(from the library) in order to get the next 3. The author's habit of telling the variations of each character's tests is interesting at first, but will become repetitive by the end of the series. And you can't just read one of these books, they each have an interesting cliffhanger that almost compells you to get to the next one. I really did enjoy the story, and there are some unexpected twists, i just think it could have been told in 3 books , not 5. In the end it is rather like eating 6 bowls of ice cream at one sitting- the first ones taste pretty good, by the last one you feel unwell.

I enjoyed the unhurried narrative, and the language made reading very smooth. The story has gotten all elements of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, with fine attention to subtle details. I liked the "regressions" into the personal lives of the characters and hope to enjoy the next four books as much as this one.

Despite the fact that Sharon Green's characters are simplistic and one-dimensional and the plot is simplistic and repetitive you can still enjoy this book.

Basically, 5 characters come together from different stereotypical backgrounds and have to pass remarkably similar tasks that are repetitively described in detail. The characters also interact socially and fall in love or become friends. Each character also has a problem from their background that comes back to haunt them later.

Despite many flaws the book still manages to be an interesting enough read, provided you skim parts of it, to be worth picking up. However, I wouldn't buy it because it isn't worth reading over again.

I forced myself to read the first 100 pages. After the fifth character repeated the exact same scenario as the others I had enough. I can see that might be a way to churn out prose rather rapidly, taking the same story and rehashing it within the same book over and over again, but it is impossible to read. If after plodding through 100 pages of a fantasy and nothing interesting happens that even remotely catches ones imagination its time to scrap the whole project. Save your money, don't read this.

This book is bad on so many levels, I can't begin to describe everything that's wrong with it. The prose is clumsy (one character's clothing is described as "eye-hurting"), especially in the sex scenes ("incredible tunnel"? Give me a break!), and the story itself isn't original enough to make up for the bad writing. Magical talents that correspond to the elements? Unwilling partners in Saving the World? Gee, never heard those before. The conflicts are tissue-thin and unconvincingly resolved, and the drama most closely resembles that found in any high-school hallway. The first-person narration before the introduction of each character is particularly poor, with Tamrissa sometimes bowled over by her nearly non-existent cleverness. For example: "Do you understand now about my comment concerning Clarion's habit of putting on 'airs'? With his aspect being Air magic, how could he do anything else?...You want me to get on with the narrative. That's probably because you missed the pun and now you're annoyed, but that's all right, I'll let you simply go on pretending to be sophisticated..." Um, no, we couldn't have missed the pun if we'd closed our eyes, put our fingers in our ears, and sung "La la la." And I wouldn't read any more of this series if it were the only fiction on earth. I am mystified as to how it got published.

This book happened to be one that I grabbed off of the shelf, not knowing a lot about either the author or the series. Little did I know that I would soon be going out scouring bookstores in order to finish my collection!

The thing that really grabbed me about this series was the characters. Green does a wonderful job developing each and every one of them as well as their connections to each other. Yes, the style of writing can get a little repetitive (it shifts between the main characters' points of view), but all you have to do is get through the first couple of chapters and it doesn't matter! The writing style even becomes refreshing because it allows you to see how the different characters deal with ideas and problems differently, adding a great deal of intrigue to the story. I consistently found myself reading on and on through the series just to find out what happened to everyone! It is one of those books that you just can't put down after you start!

The story is about five strangers, Lorand, Tamrissa, Vallant, Rion, and Jovvi, each with a different, but strong, magical gift (earth, fire, water, air, and spirit), who live in a world where everyone has their own magic. The five meet and "converge" in this book, and then Green begins to masterfully weave her characters and story with romance, suspense, and action. I don't want to give anything away, but I can tell you that each book is a cliffhanger, so you shouldn't wait to get the next one so that you have it on hand when you finish the first!

OK, this book has some low points, but really, have you ever read one that didn't? {E-mail me with the title if so} And don't get all defensive and start blabbering about how The Lord of the Rings was perfect in EVERY way. I've read it and have to admit Tolkien does know how to write fantasy. That doesn't mean that Green doesn't. Convergence was an exciting book full of adventure, pride, terror, and romance. Though I've got to say that the "romance" was taken a little to far in one truly outrageous "love" scene. WARNING: It left NOTHING out. But the dim-wits who are griping about how she wrote the same thing with every character? If she hadn't you still would of nagged, but about how she left information out. This book may not be perfect, but it's still worth your time. READ IT.

Really, really, really repetitive. You might as well read the back or excerpt 20 times and save yourself the time (after all, the cover is pretty).

There are 5 main characters, each of them having the powers of one of the elements (fire, water, earth, air, spirit). All 5 are going through mandatory testing in their field, towards an end result none of them are really sure of. The potential political intrigue gave a taste of something interesting to come, but it never blossomed in this volume.

All 5 have different goals when they start -- some are looking for a career with their powers, others just want to get back to what they were doing before -- but all of them continue to progress and must participate in the challenges. As the characters are introduced at the beginning, they each get separate chapters, and at some point their stories overlap as they meet each other. For all 5, you must read the overlaps (character A point of view meeting B, then B and his point of view when meeting character A). Not really bad, but 5 times and it got old.

Mind, those scenes followed each character signing up and taking their initial test, a process that was almost identical for each character but again you must read it in all 5 points of view. Each character has some person from their recent pass whom they must break away from or learn not to fear etc. and they all do it in order. So on and so forth. This continues throughout, and it got so repetitive as to be really annoying. I skipped entire pages.
Cut out 4 characters and nothing would be missing.

Then the ending was horrible -- it spends a lot of time introducing the next set of challenges for each character, then ends with none of them having started those challenges, and with no resolution in any other aspect of their stories. Tedious. It went so far as to end with 'the first thing to happen [next] was...' almost word for word (with the ellipses). Urgh.

Shallow characters. Potential, but the author failed. Just when I thought I might like a character they'd prove themselves two-dimensional and simplistic. The romances started nicely but soon became laughable (in an irritating way).

The writer kept trying to give me life messages i.e. 'chances don't come if you wait, you make your own' and so forth. It was done in an obvious manner, and it got annoying.

The only reason I give it 2 stars is that I actually read the entire thing. I kept hoping something would happen. And it had its moments, few of them but they were there. Overall, though, I do not recommend this book.