The Heart of Myrial [Paperback]

Maggie Furey (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Orbit (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1857239024
• ISBN-13: 978-1857239027
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,708,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and intricate fantasty tale, March 5, 2000

By 

Becky Poplawsky (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Heart of Myrial (Shadowleague) (Mass Market Paperback)

Fast moving and very intricate tale, this book is somewhat slow at the beginning but as you become acquainted with the main characters you find that it is almost impossible to put down. Excellent characterizations and good plot detail. I highly recommend this book to any reader who enjoys Eddings.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good start to the Shadowleague series., March 30, 2000

By 

S Smyth (Belfast, Co Antrim United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Heart of Myrial (Shadowleague) (Mass Market Paperback)

This book draws upon a large cast of characters' view points to fill out its four hundred plus pages, making me wonder if some of them serve any greater purpose. But this is book one of three, so it remains to be seen. Even so, it builds very satisfactorily towards the next one, using Zavahl's escape from the sacrificial pyre as a closure. There was a bit of a black hole after the pacey Chapter One until Veldan and Kaz reappeared by Chapter Four. Whilst this left space to introduce the bulk of the other players it would have been more agreeable, for the sake of focus, to have brought them in and out briefly instead: after all, everything at that stage happens at much the same time. Nonetheless it all shoots along with good tie-ins between the characters, including details you think have been missed: Scall realising who Seriema's attacker is being a good example. I thought the prose style was better than most of the British fantasy stuff that I've read lately, though it is a little over extended in places, and a lot of the fancier words could have been replaced with plainer ones to better effect. (I'm not sure that `misanthropic' with respect to the donkey's character was really the best choice.) Neither J.R. R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, or C.J. Cherryh, for example, resort to such. Anyway, I'm keen to find out how Shree escapes from Blade's trans-dimensional black bag, and so on.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Whew..., March 13, 2005

By 

Jessica G. "lilac_jive" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Heart of Myrial (Shadowleague) (Mass Market Paperback)

The back of this book was completely misleading. I assumed that this book would be centered on the three characters Veldan, Kaz, and Aethon, but boy was I wrong. The story starts off with them, sure, but then you are introduced to a slew of other characters, and the whole book follows each of their stories and how their paths cross.

This sounds like a problem, but it really wasn't. I did find myself frustrated occasionally when I wanted to know what happened to another character but had to wait and read a boring story of another. But after the beginning you do get interested in all of them, so the frustration ends quickly. If you read her Aurian books, this is a little different. In those there were also many subplots, but you could easily distinguish the main characters. This book is like one huge subplot though, and even though Veldan and Kaz are on the cover, I still don't get the feeling they are the main characters. I'm hoping that'll change in the next book.

This book moves very slowly time-wise. Everything occurs in about three days, and sometimes its difficult to line up what each character is doing in order. I'm sure thats on purpose though, and it definetly keeps you on your toes.

The characters are very likeable in my opinion, especially Kazail the firedrake. I've noticed Furey is very good at characterization, not making a person completely bad or good, and gives them the ability to change. One thing I preferred about this book over her last series is less wimpy characters. For those of you who read the Artefacts series, you should know what I'm talking about (I can't stand whiners). I'm crossing my fingers that it'll stay that way.

And for all you romance lovers, there isn't any in this book, although some future possibilities seem to be forming. Overall, I really did enjoy this book, even though it had a few flaws. I'm even more glad that I have the next two handy. If you did read her last series (and liked it), I would recommend you pick up all three. Otherwise, try the first one and see how you like it. I think all fantasy readers should give it a shot though.