Most Helpful Customer Reviews
100 of 116 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
"The Epic Fantasy of the Year" -- isn't, August 17, 2002
This review is from: The Fifth Sorceress (Chronicles of Blood and Stone, Book 1) (Hardcover)
As I was reading this book, a line from THE MUSIC MAN kept running through my mind: "But ya gotta know the territory!" Let me explain: This is Robert Newcomb's debut novel. No marks against him there; everyone's got to start someplace. But not only has he not written fantasy before; apparently, he has only *read* one fantasy novel in his life. How someone can presume to participate in a genre in which he's not well-versed, I don't know, but Newcomb's lack of background shows in that he falls into the cliché-trap at nearly every turn. You've got an ancient war with prophecies and repercussions into the present day. You've got a gruff, inscrutable wizard mentoring the young, reluctant prince -- who happens to have unimaginably vast magical potential. There is no all-powerful EEEVILLLLL Dark Lord, but what there is is worse: the enemies are Sorceresses, the female magic-wielding counterparts of Wizards. Unlike in Robert Jordan's books, in which case there is a plausible reason for the schism between male and female magic users, here for some reason the women are just kind of randomly, innately evil. The author pretty much comes out and says that women, granted power, will almost inevitably use it for evil, whereas men, granted the same power, manage to maintain self-control and use it only altruistically. The writing is effective but pedestrian; in fact, it could use quite a bit of work. Newcomb has some pretty good visuals, but he often rambles on for pages of details when mere paragraphs would have been sufficient; he uses five words where one would work. The book is full of awkwardly phrased sentences, typos, and annoyingly frequent repetition of phrases such as "impossible angles," or the use of "the old one" to describe the wizard. Additionally, the violence is brutally and graphically depicted without being at all kinetic or engaging, making even the battles a chore to read. In terms of the plot, the novel opens hundreds of years in the past, at the end of a war between the Sorceresses and the Wizards. The Wizards, having won, make an unbelievably, and unforgivably, stupid decision -- they free the evil and powerful leaders of the Sorceresses to live in exile, rather than executing them. Needless to say, this altruistic act comes back to haunt them, as the Sorceresses, like the Wizards, have employed their powers to make "time enchantments" that make them effectively immortal. The Sorceresses, presumed dead in their exile, create a big army and. . .you get the picture. As for the magic itself, which is an important thing in a fantasy novel, it's pretty much a rehash of the old "Light Side of the Force/Dark Side of the Force" dichotomy with a few twists that pretty much make no sense. Further, there's very little sense of any kind of *rules* to the magic system; a Wizard seems able to do just about anything with magic without tiring or draining himself unduly. To close, I'll say this: I've seen this book compared to George R. R. Martin's books several times. I'd just like to point out that Martin's novels are not popular because they're big, thick fantasy. They're popular because they're good. Despite their length, they don't waste words. Every scene is important. Every character is important. And the events are not standard, clichéd fantasy fare. Readers are smart. They are not fooled by the fact that a book is long, and they recognize quality when they see it. This book is not quality fantasy. It is overlong, overdetailed, boring, silly, and far too self-important. I, for one, will not be reading any further volumes of this series.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
49 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
WAR OF THE WORDS, March 26, 2003
This review is from: The Fifth Sorceress (Chronicles of Blood and Stone, Book 1) (Hardcover)
This book is an exciting account of a death-struggle between two mortal foes. Only one cam triumph. These deadly adversaries are the author and the English language. English loses. THE ADVERB PLAGUE! Good writers know that you don't tell your readers what you just said. Mr. Newcomb has yet to learn this. So we have gems like "Go around it,' Shannon said quickly."
"You'll soon find out,' he said sternly." "Gnomes,' he said simply." These examples are all from pp. 318 and 319, and there are two more in the same place. The first quote in the book is "Bring them up,' Wigg said simply."
Mr. Newcomb should find out what a "Tom Swifty" is. HOWLERS? Oh, yes. "Swinging one leg over the pommel of his saddle, he slipped quickly to the ground." (still p. 318) I'm sure he did, if he tried to dismount by swinging his leg over his horse's head. Nice image, though.
"Don't get any ideas about stealing our horses.' He narrowed his eyes and smiled ruefully." (318 yet again!) I wonder what the author thinks 'ruefully' means? REPETITION? Let's see...
(260) "reached out at the last possible instant"
(262) "help me wait until the last instant"
(262, 6 lines lower) "At the last possible second, Tristan..."
No editor could have been assigned to the book. WONDERFUL NAMES! So ingenious, like Tristan (where's Isolde?), Natasha (where's Boris?), Wigg (Wigg??), Lillith (where's Eve?) Lillith's father is named Agamedes, and her brother is Chauncey. Obviously an Anglo-Greek lass. (Chauncey??) I could go on, but it's hardly necessary. The amazing thing is that, not being a masochist, I didn't read the whole book. I did not need to scrutinize the work for occasional lapses. I found these almost at random. This is just plain bad writing. It is a weak first draft. How could such a thing be accepted by an agent and a publisher? The biggest loser in all of this is the author, who, with this thing on the shelves, may never learn to write at all. Please, someone, send him a copy of Browne and King's "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers," quick. Or maybe his publisher will buy him a copy. It's the least Del Rey could do, seeing that they wouldn't give him an editor. FINALLY: I pass over in silence, since others have covered them here, the unpleasing scenes of ghastly, gratuitous gore and silly, sadistic sex that the author inserts, perhaps in a desperate effort to keep his readers awake. But I can't resist mentioning that Mr. Newcomb manages to mess up even his dedication! It reads, "For Joyce, mon raison d'etre." But 'raison' is feminine, and the phrase should be 'ma raison.' Please, Monsieur Newcomb, stay away from foreign languages. You have enough trouble with English!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
What were they thinking?, July 28, 2003
Now let me get this straight. The high point of this book comes when a gnome named "Shannon the Small" bites the hero on the crotch, and yet Del Rey is calling this "The epic fantasy of the year"? Tolkien must be spinning in his grave. In all honesty, the awfulness of "The Fifth Sorceress" and the pathetic tactics that Del Rey used to market it have both become the subject of internet legend, so posting yet another scathing review here would almost be redundant. But my rage at having my time wasted by such lazy and lousy rubbish has yet to die down, so I'm going to do it anyway. To say that "The Fifth Sorceress" is the most pathetic, incoherent, solipsistic, tedious, and idiotic fantasy novel ever written would be to give this turkey far more respect than it deserves. A fantasy novel by definition is supposed to have a storyline, characters, and some sort of plot progression. The Fifth sorceress, by contrast, is nothing more than a collection of disgusting NC-17 sex scenes pitched together in a heap of rubble, bearing no relationship to the book's alleged plot and no obvious justification for their existence other than that the author apparently feels that his horny teenage audience wishes to ogle at such material. I'd like to point out that when I say this, I'm not referring merely to the sorts of BDSM filth that's been proliferating among talentless hacks of the fantasy genre during recent years, though Newcomb does gratuitously douse his readers with several hundred pages of such material. This book also includes extremely lengthy and very graphic depictions of women being dunked in piles of feces and vomit, getting eaten alive by rats, and being raped by monsters, and it's all presented in such an exploitative manner that it's clear the author enjoys these scenes and expects his readers to as well. Needless to say, the publisher does not admit that this book is pornography, but instead dredges up the ludicrous claim that stuffing chapter after chapter with such filth makes "The Fifth Sorceress" adult fantasy. Exactly how dumb do they think we are? Adult fantasy is achieved through high quality writing and thorough character development; authors who devote half their book to juvenile masturbation fantasy do so with the sole intention of roping in a teenage audience that has not yet developed good taste. And the fact that Mr. Newcomb has yet to advance beyond the "girls are icky, they've got cooties" stage is really just adding insult to injury. I could delve into that topic further, but other reviewers seemed to have covered it adequately. So if we look past the masochistic porn, what do we get? Not much. Some fantasy authors such as Robert Jordan have stumbled upon the problem that later volumes of their series' grow slow and repetitious. Newcomb neatly circumvents this obstacle by making his opus labored and tedious right from the start. As a matter of fact, there is only one real action scene in the entire work, and the plot is not even set into motion until two hundred pages have gone by. Most of that opening section is consumed by pointless descriptions of dresses and furniture and equally trivial interior monologues by which the main characters state their personalities or lack thereof. Newcomb also packs an fixation with annoying mannerisms (if you think that Jordan is obsessed with women's braids, you ain't seen nothing yet) and is so in love with the sound of his own writing that he makes his characters repeat oaths of loyalty and other patches of uninspired dialogue over and over again. His total inability to edit down his bulky blocks of text eventually leads him to stretch a trite and formulaic fantasy plot over seven hundred pages, not one of which contains the slightest hint of excitement. Fantasy is not a genre known for great psychological depth or outstanding logic, but there are times where Newcomb's stupidity is so aggressive that he seems to be rubbing it in the reader's face. For instance, when main hero Tristan sees most of his family and friends get butchered off in a surprise attack, it seems intuitively obvious that this would be a rather traumatizing experience. Tristan, however, displays no emotional reaction to it at all, and instead just sits patiently while his wise old bearded wizard mentor regales him with a fifty-page lecture of how Newcomb's magic system works. (What's particularly embarrassing is that it's just a standard light magic vs. dark magic system.) For that matter, the wise mentor also says that he knew the attack was coming, but doesn't provide any explanation as to why he didn't move to prevent it. If Newcomb ever does bother to take up classes in psychology or logic, he might want to consider sitting in on an English class as well. He overuses cliches and his descriptions are so poorly written that they frequently become entirely meaningless. It might appear to some that I've been overly nasty in my review. But the fact is that Del Rey is being nasty to us, the fans of the fantasy genre, by printing such filth and asking us to spend money on it. By publishing "The Fifth Sorceress", they're basically saying that they treat the whole genre as a joke and its fans as idiots. While I feel contempt for the editors and publishers who approved this rubbish heap, I can't summon up anything other than pity for Robert Newcomb, an author who has obvious been pampered and sheltered from reality for so long that he is not even capable of considering the possibility that anything he writes could be less than literary gold. This unfortunate miscalculation will only earn him notoriety in the minds of generations of fans as an author whose incompetence in storytelling was matched only by his hubristic opinions of his own work. It's sad, but nothing can be done about it now.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
