Customer Reviews

The Eyes of God

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

The Eyes of God is a story of how a single decision made for the sake of love leads to a series of unjust tragedies. Authors on the outside and inside covers commend it for being vague about what is for good and what is for ill. But while some authors, George RR Martin being my favorite, can write a story that is wholeheartedly grey or even black and still have their readers twined around their fingers, the Eyes of God only manages with its neutrality to make the reader care less about the characters.

Every character but the villain and antihero is the same... they care deeply for human life but have a hard streak if you touch the wrong topic. They have a great weakness, but have learned to overcome it with time. This lack of distinction made it difficult to associate with any characters after the first three that were introduced.

It would seem the author realized that with the characters' lack of individual charisma, he needed something else in order to make the reader take sides. The "good guys" not only have higher moral standards, but are also protecting a keep full of defenseless cripples. The "bad guys" are not only aggressors without moral cause, they are also murderers and psychopaths.

My complaints could go on, but I have a word limit to deal with here. I should put in a few words about why I gave this a 2 instead of a 1. The anti-hero King Akeela follows an interesting path of descent to redemption throughout the book. He is without a doubt the most dynamic character contained within. Also, the plot, while not being full of suprises, follows a fairly unfamiliar path if the Arthurian love triangle is cast aside. If you like stories of medieval wars and aren't huge on characters, this story might be for you, but don't say I reccomended it.

Having read John Marco's previous novels, of the TYRANTS AND KINGS trilogy, I went into THE EYES OF GOD with high expectations. T&K, despite characters that were usually pretty weak, was an amazing military fantasy, featuring some the best-written and most inventive battle sequences I've ever read, and quite a bit of interesting strategizing. THE EYES OF GOD, however, is a very definite departure from what Marco has written before. This novel is much more character-driven than his other novels; it is not about a war, but about the interactions of its characters. This was an ambitious move on Marco's part, considering how weak many of his characters have been in his previous novels, and it provides mixed results.

This book is broken into three parts, each better than the last. Truth to tell, I really had to force my way through much of Part One; there was very little originality there. Part One was mostly just a retelling of the whole Arthur/Lancelot/Guenevere story, with a few twists, but it really served to make me a bit wary as to what the rest of the novel would hold. Part Two picks up nearly twenty years later, and basically is there to get all the characters in position for Part Three, which is where the final confrontation between characters occurs. Not only did my level of interest in the plot grow with each successive part -- Marco's skill at writing believable characters grew, too. At the beginning of the novel, many of the characters' actions seemed kind of spontaneous and didn't really work with what we knew of the characters, but by the end the characters all seemed real and natural.

THE EYES OF GOD is a massive book, an epic fantasy that is truly worthy of the name. Like all of Marco's previous novels, this one stands alone even though it is part of a series. This is a book about love and betrayal, passion and madness, loyalty and honor, cowardice and paranoia and guilt. There are some battles, though frequently not on the scale of Marco's previous novels. There are nations at war, but they are not the point of this book. There are magical amulets, characters with "magic," monstrous beings, intrigue and revenge.

Overall, despite a shaky start, this novel is definitely worth reading, and Marco's definitely an author to keep your eyes on.

I'm not sure I'd have given this even one star, but there was nothing less, so there you are. Not only is the plot predictable, the culture borrowed from our own world, but the actual writing itself is an English teacher's nightmare. Examples of misplaced or wrong conjunctions, and nonsequiter sentences and out of place, but very simplistic thoughts made this a laborious read. Other reviewers have extolled his military prowess, but being from a military family, I found it woefully immature lacking in military protocol. When a good writer such as Jordon writes, one takes for granted their vast knowledge in warfare, civilization building, intrigue, human woes, royalty, and leadership. Marco's attempt at building these is childish and I wondered how any publishing company accepted him. The characters are shallow and their behaviors are not consistent with their station in life.

If you want a good read, filled with the moral high ground, written in English (I at first thought Marco was not from America, and that it was simply a bad translation), full of adventure, and characters you can identify with, then don't waste your money on this series.

I don't have too much to say about this story. I felt like Marco may have been trying to create some dramatic tension for future books, but what we get here is largely awful people doing awful things and just a lot of misery with no payoff. If you enjoy disappointment, this book is for you.

Maybe if I had read this book in my adolescence I would have liked it, but as an adult, I found it very lacking. First of all, this book was WAY too long. Another writer could have told the same story in a third of the pages. Secondly, the characters were shallow and slow-witted. They never thought about the consequences of their actions or about their next steps. I felt like the characters had the mentalities of seven-year old children. Because the characters didn't feel substantial, I never felt emotion toward them and therefore didn't care what they did. If you don't care about the characters, you don't care about the story. Lastly, I don't think the book was very creative. The characters who were soldiers went to "War College". Another character who was blind was called "White Eye".

I guess I am just past the point where a mediocre story will suffice. I do not plan on reading the sequel. For those of you who want a darker, deeper, and not so PG fantasy novel, I recommend skipping this book.

The Eyes of God is a book that could have been a great fantasy such as George R.R. martin's "A game of Thrones." The overall plot is interesting. However, John Marco turns a book that could have been about 200 pages into a long, dull, and extremely wordy 784 pages.

Instead of developing the characters, he describes their clothes; instead of describing their emotions and feelings, he describes the buildings.
Instead of SHOWING what the characters are going through, he simply TELLS and moves on to describes totally unnecessary details. This produces characters that the reader doesn't care about. I, for one, sometimes wished for the deaths of some characters just so the plot would get moving.

There are some interesting sides to it. For example, John Marco has the ability to surprise the reader by creating situations that would never cross the reader's mind. But this does not make up for the hundreds of pages of crap that you have to torture yourself through.

Having finished the Tyrants and Kings series, I was certainly eager to read Marco's latest effort. Unfortunately, the entire book seems as if it was rushed. The intricate detail in the prose of The Tyrants Series, the worldbuilding that makes the reader almost imagine that he or she is actually in Crote or Nar City, the rich characterizations...just not there in this book. Worse, the flaws of the Tyrants series- banal dialogue, characters who make idiotic and baffling decisions, etc, are actually magnified in this book. The redeeming quality of Eyes is in the plotting. Even at his worst, Marco is an excellent storyteller. But, unless he improves a WRITER, not just storyteller, comparisions to the likes of Hobb and Martin and Kay are extremely premature.

Sheryl McCallister hit the nail on the head with her review, but I felt the need to vote and try to drop the star count for this pile of dung.
I purchased it based on Tad Williams rave review on the front cover. Constantly being told everything completely kills this novel. Three characters prepare for the most arduous journey of their lives to Ganjor and then Jador (the nation where no one has been and no one knows), and instead of showing us a harrowing trip...they just wind up at their destination. Then we are told it was a really tough journey, but they made it.
The character's actions/thoughts/dialogue do not match up. We have someone scream then suddenly stare blankly into a wine glass.
GRRRRR....thoroughly disappointed

I purchased this book and its sequel at the same time on the strength of the back-cover blurb. I won't ever make that mistake again. The writing is deeply, deeply terrible. The character's actions are completely at odds with the way they are described - the battle-hardened Lukien, whose life is war weeps every time a minor character dies - and we are constantly told, not shown, how we should be perceiving characters. If you have an extremely high tolerance for Terry Goodkind's worst, most pedantic writing you could conceivably enjoy this book. If you're looking for an intricately plotted, well-written work of epic scale to rival George R. R. Martin or Raymond E. Feist...look elsewhere.

This wasn't a very good book. The characters were too flat for the story. Parts of the story were too easily solved or dismissed. And the book tries to be too many stories in one. Is it a story of betrayal between brothers? Not when one brother disappears for a quarter of the book and the main character shifts from one of the brothers to someone else not involved and SPOILER one of the brothers goes mad, not from being betrayed but because he kills a man. Or is it a story of a story of a place of magic and "disabled monsters" against a mad king and his brutal general? If so then what's with the first half to two-thirds of the book. Etc. etc.

The theme was too heavy for the characters. Betrayal and jealousy enough to drive men mad require more than paper thin characters and more time and interaction between those characters than occurred. If the author had stuck with one major theme or more time developing and resolving each theme and character this could have been a good book. Or if he had taken a lighter touch and let it be a straight fantasy adventure it could have worked too. He didn't so I give this book a D.