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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brave new world!, December 12, 2007
This review is from: Cry of Justice (Hardcover)
The first few chapters of this book worried me, frankly. The author is intelligent, well-read, and imaginative, but does not always edit sharply, and the beginning of the book seemed to threaten too much melodrama and introspection for my taste. In retrospect, I wonder if those chapters are intended as a challenge . . . they are meant to tease, but for me at least, they also demanded a certain commitment.
Pratt ultimately rewards that commitment. His world is richly imagined and intelligently patterned, both internally and (as what Tolkien called a "sub-creation") with our own tribal and magical past. There is some humor, irony, and clever changes of perspective. More dispassion might improve the prose at times. Some of the characters seem irritating at first -- I wanted to smack Jian on the head a few times -- but they grow on you. (What may be irritating about his relationship with the Amazon in charge is the lack of mutuality -- is this masochism? -- but things become more nuanced and interesting later on, and she less of an Amazon.)
Probably the simplest and most honest thing I can say about this book is that I enjoyed it. I was doing a lot of other reading at the time -- research, mostly -- and I was overseas, in a dorm room a long ways from home. Mikon -- if that's what the world is called, Pratt doesn't often give lectures on the geography, fauna or history, he lets you try to figure things out as you go along -- became a comfortable place to refresh the mind.
Like The Golden Compass, this is a novel of ideas, though of course quite different ideas. (And also, of course, it's not intended for children.) I recognized "the Eye" as a (rather spooky, with Sauron in the back of our minds) tribal appelation for God right away. I'll be interested to see how Pratt develops his demonology and supra-mundane levels of reality in later novels. One of the good things about this book is that the author doesn't make things too explicit.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
No sparks for me, February 10, 2009
This review is from: Cry of Justice (Hardcover)
Cry of Justice is the story of a fictional world called Mikon. Right away from the beginning the story picks up instantly after a horrible international war that has left thousands of refugees fleeing from the Coastal States. They make their way into the vast dangerous wilderness of the Middlelands.
A small group of the survivors are lead be Commander Portunista. She is an innovative thinker and a maga. She dreams of seeking imperial glory for herself. Then there is Seifas, a hunter who's best weapon is his poetry. Also thrown into the mix is Gaekwar, Othon, Dagon, Pooralay, and Bornas.
Portunista will try and lead them across the Middlelands safely, while trying to get to know her charges better. Though all of these people are different, there is one thing they have in common... that is the need to hunt for food, the increasing hunger to understand their new wealth of knowledge and mayhap the most important of all... the will to live.
Cry of Justice is the first book in this trilogy by author, Jason Pratt. While I found the premise for this book to be very intriguing, I found I had a hard time getting into it. It started out very chaotic. Right away there were all these different characters for me to identify very quickly. Even though there was a brief description of each of the main characters in the book, it did not really help me to understand what was happening. The storyline started with poetry then jumped to someone talking and finally the story seemed to start to reveal itself for me.
The story is really toward through journal entries made by each character, which I thought was a nice way to tell the story as it helped me get more personal with everyone. Except on the other hand I had an issue with the small print that was done for the journal entries. It was much smaller print than when the story was moving along. I am sure this was to help separate the storyline from the entries but it made it a little hard to read.
For anyone who enjoys a good fantasy, this is the book for you. What Mr. Pratt did reveal to me with Cry of Justice is that he is a good storyteller. I would try another one of his books down the road.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
CoJ video commercial, October 8, 2010
This review is from: Cry of Justice (Hardcover)
Length:: 1:07 Mins
This is just a brief video commercial for CRY OF JUSTICE. It isn't a review, and I tried not to include a star rating.
However, Amazon required me to give it a star rating, so I originally give the book a three star rating. That handicapped me slightly, since that was less than the current average, but I think rating it higher than the average would only be cheating.
Since then, Amazon has attempted to purge book reviewers who cannot prove they bought or received the book. That's a fine idea in principle, but it also resulted in some legitimate reviews being removed, including one of mine. This reduced the star rating average, so I have bumped up to 4 stars to compensate.
Which happens to be about what I would rate my own book anyway. {g} But if more reviews show up pushing the average over 4, I'll back it down again to 3.
(Also, I have in fact bought a copy from Amazon for purposes of giving it as a gift to someone, so to help keep this from disappearing I have checked the proper box below.)
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