Customer Reviews

Heirs of Prophecy (Forgotten Realms: Sembia Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fairly good read, the plot is average, but the story telling, vivid descriptions, and good character development help make this story.

This is a story about good/noble/wonderful elves, and bad/greedy/bigoted/cheating/lying humans (sigh). The Heroine must stop a war, stop a evil wizard, save her brothers, and all with the power of LOVE!!! [yuck]. But the story is told with wonderful descriptive prose, reasonable complex characterizations, and seems to make up for the insipid plot. The flying cat is enough reason too read this book!

Although giving the elves facial tattoos seriously put me off, and nearly had me toss out the book. If you can get past this `sacralige', and you like this sort of story, you will probably like "Heirs of Prophecy".

OVERALL SCORE: (B-)
READABILITY: (A-), PLOT: (C-), CHARATERS: (A), DIALOGUE: (B-), SETTING: (A), ACTION/COMBAT: (B-), MONSTERS/ANTAGONISTS: (B+), ROMANCE: (n/a), SEX: (n/a), AGE LEVEL: (G/PG)

This review is for the book `Heirs of Prophecy', which is Book V of the seven book `Sembia: Gateway to the Realms' series. This review is intended as a critique of the writing and flow of the book, not to reveal "spoolers". Please note: I am assuming that people have read The Halls of Stormweather, Book I of the series, prior to reading this review. If you haven't, you may wish to skip down to the last two paragraphs for my overall recommendation of this book, which will not contain any information about previous books in this series.

This book focuses on Larijin, a half-elven maid of the Uskevren household and illegitimate daughter of Thamalon Uskevren, written by Lisa Smedman. This story takes place over a year after the events of the short story `Skin Deep'. Larijin's ancestry is still a closely guarded secret, which is even kept from the other members of the Uskevren family. This keeps Larijin as an outsider which fuels her desire to learn more about elven heritage and why the group of her mothers people came to being her back. At the same time, the tension between the wood elves and the people of Sembia is growing, which lands Larijin right in the middle. Underneath the imposing conflict lies the need for understanding and acceptance.

Overall, the book is easily on par with may great books written by other great authors, in fact I am hard pressed to think if a book which has been better written. At no time while reading this book did I have a feeling of the story being rushed, nor that it going too slow. The story flows as needed for the events at the time. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the short story `Skin Deep', as well as readers of the Forgotten Realms and other shared fantasy settings. I would also recommend this book to readers of general Fantasy, looking for a new view on fantasy story telling. I would recommend reading The Halls of Stormweather prior to reading this book. Although the `Sembia: Gateway to the Realms' series is not linear, they occur in conjunction with one another, I would recommend reading the prior books of the series first. Each book will make references to the events of the prior books, so the reader will have a more encompassing experience and a greater understanding of the time line throughout the series.

A Note to Readers new to Forgotten Realms: Like many shared settings, especially those stemming from gaming or other media types, the Forgotten Realms books are written with the assumption that the reader has some familiarity with the Forgotten Realms gaming setting. This frees up the author to focus on his or her story, instead of having to explain the world in which the story takes place; the calendar, geography, common races/species, magical properties, etc. This is very important when the book length is normally confined to 300 - 350 pages. As a reader reads more books in the Forgotten Realms setting, they will become more familiar with the world of Faerun and its inhabitants, making the experience more pleasant. The `Sembia: Gateway to the Realms' series is an excellent place for a reader to begin their journey into the Forgotten Realms, since the stories take place in a fairly localized area and contains mostly creatures common to fantasy literature in general.

Heirs of Prophecy by Lisa Smedman is the fifth book in the Sembia: Gateway to the Realms series. The story is focused on Larajin, a maid of House Uskevren. The events that happen in this story follow the events in Skin Deep by Lisa Smedman, a short story in The Halls of Stormweather anthology.

I'll just simply reword what the description says on the back of the book. In the forests of Cormanthor, the elves start attacking the trade routes, giving Sembia an exuse for war. Larajin, finds out she is Thamalon Uskevren's half-elf daughter, which is not good because the Sembians are attacking elf owned shops. She travels to Cormanthor to learn more about her mother and hopefully prevent war.

Negatives:
1) Continuity. In the previous books, the events of each preceding book were mentioned breifly. They were well done in their little recaps. However, since this follows what happened in Black Wolf by Dave Gross (the previous book), and because Talbot Uskevren and Larajin were close before this, these two stories should have been on the same page. The main problem was with Talbot and Master Ferrick, a fencing teacher. Basically, Talbot was kicked out of Master Ferrick's class. Yet, in this story Talbot is going to war with the class, and this story comes AFTER Black Wolf. That was my main problem. Oh and where is Feena?
2) Predictable. Granted, maybe it wasn't supposed to be, but I just felt like everything was too easy to see coming. There really wasn't any surprises.
3) Larajin and Leifander. Larajin at times seemed to whiny and annoying. Also, she seemed too powerful for a maid. Leifander seemed as whiny and annoying. But the thing that really got to me was his overall attitude towards humans. It just grated on my nerves.

Positives:
1) The Flow. I seem to always have something to say about the pacing and flow of the story. I enjoyed how fast of a read it was. Only, I had to slow myself down because I couldn't find book 6 in the series and had to order it. But other than that... The chapter read pretty fast and it did seem really well paced.
2) The Resolution. The ending was predictable but it still, I felt, was exciting. I didn't really expect that what happened was going to happen.
3) Larajin. When she wasn't whining or annoying she was a pretty interesting character. Most of the time she seemed to not be all that powerful when faced with certain obstacles. That made it good. It does get old that when the going gets tough, the heroes pull it out. But Larajin always seemed to benefit from either running away, being saved by someone, or sheer luck.

Overall: 2.5/5
*The story could have benefited greatly if it followed Black Wolf much better*

"Heirs of Prophecy" is the fifth installment in the, so far, excellent "Sembia" series of stand-alone novels. I liked Smedman's earlier works (or rather later works since those books I read were written after this one), and I came into reading this novel with rather high expectations. It was not to be, though.

First something about the good things in this novel. Smedman's imagination is very colorful, and she gives some very good and vivid descriptions of Cormanthor forest and the wild elves living in it. Besides that, one of the characters, Leifander, is very interesting and well fleshed-out, which can't be said about this novel's other characters. The book also contains very few combat scenes, something I find very refreshing.

Now the bad stuff. As I mentioned, most of the characters are very shallow and uninteresting, and especially the book's main character Larajin. There is a concept about her being a priest of two goddesses at once, and while it may seem interesting, it turns out rather boring and repetitive. The author wanted to give a feeling of progress to her powers, I guess, but it turned out to be ridiculously fast. The plot is the standard "D&D adventure" plot, as I like to call it. Go there, learn that, go somewhere else, meet someone, do something, go somewhere again. There is a prophecy, a lost family member, a looming war, everything that has been written a million times over. To be honest, last forty or so pages show that there was maybe something to be done with the plot, but too little and far too late. The book also has a couple of annoying inconsistencies, such as elves despoiling their own burial grounds.

All in all, I expected far more from this novel. Read at your own discretion.

Larajin, the bastard half-elf daughter of Thamalon Uskevren, is a likeable and appealing character, and at first it's pleasing to follow her adventures. But when four powers clash with no visible fallout, an avariel elf, the first ever to appear in a Forgotten Realms novel, a truly once in a lifetime occurence, is tossed in as a subplot, the imperious Lord Maalthiir is reduced to a sub-moron and the entire war plot is resolved through a set of contrivances and mixmatched loves that wouldn't seem out of place in a Restoration Comedy like The Way of the World... well let's just say that something's missing.