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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
One of the better Magic books, which doesn't say much, February 24, 2006
This review is from: Jedit (Legends Cycle, Book II) (Mass Market Paperback)
Although Jedit is one of the better Magic: the Gathering books, it does not carry off it's goal of telling an entertaining tale about the MTG universe. The connection between the book and the Legends cycle current at the time was even weaker than usual in these books, but the story itself was somewhat better. All told, an engaging tale that does not require intimate knowledge of the game world it portrays, but neither does it fully exploit the possibilities of that world.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A decent book, but has little influence on the overall story-arc, March 29, 2011
This review is from: Jedit (Legends Cycle, Book II) (Mass Market Paperback)
While I continue to enjoy Clayton Emery's writing, this second volume in the "Legends Cycle" falls short as far as substance. Picking up where Johan left off, with the fresh-from-defeat Johan fleeing into the unknown following a vague notion of finding Jaeger's people, this book focuses on (you guessed it) Jaeger's son, Jedit. Basically, the entire book follows Jedit as he learns the fate of his father, then seeks revenge against Johan by joining Adira Strongheart's band and chasing Johan into unknown lands to meet unknown challenges, but hopefully to find and destroy Johan. If that sounds like a pretty vague and indeterminate storyline, that's because that is exactly what Emery serves up with this one. As with the previous book, JEDIT is full of excellent and fast-paced descriptive writing, good characters, and exciting battles. It just fails to tell a compelling and cohesive story as you never really get a good sense of where the book is going, why its going there, or what the outcome will be. The characters seem to have very little motivation for following the path they do, just tracking Johan from place to place until they end up in a mysterious ancient castle where they encounter the book's true villain (who has little to nothing to do with the rest of the series). In other words, this book just seems like filler between the 1st and 3rd books of the series. A decent book, but fails to fulfill its place in the over-arching storyline. Somewhat disappointing.
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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible, terrible stuff, February 12, 2008
This review is from: Jedit (Legends Cycle, Book II) (Mass Market Paperback)
I don't normally write Amazon reviews, but I felt I had a service to perform, given that this novel has the distinction of being the absolute worst piece of published fiction I have ever read. And I have read quite a few bad fantasy novels.
It has actually been quite some time since I read "Jedit," but it was so poorly written that it made a very lasting impression on me. The pacing of the book is terrible; the author (or authors, no matter that the book claims to be written by a man named Clayton Emery, I suspect it was written by either a committee of terrible ghost writers or a single impressive mad-lib program) jumps from event to event suddenly and without any kind of overarching narrative structure. There is little to no explanation for what is happening, why it is happening, where it is happening, or even when it is happening at any given time. Points of view shift randomly and without warning, and week-long journeys are resolved in half a sentence, or ignored entirely, while a poorly-choreographed action sequence might drag on for pages. The "plot" reads as if the author merely thought up a series of unconnected action sequences and attempted to tie them together with the barest strands of storytelling. I hesitate to call the characterization even two dimensional, as the characters have little dimension at all; the characters act without any apparent motivation, and aside from the main character (who displays a cookie-cutter, utterly bland demeanor of reticence) also exhibit no discernible personalities. Every character might as well be a nameless extra, existing only as a stand in for the banal action sequences.
The technical quality of the writing itself is also terrible. I mentioned that, didn't I? This book made such a strong and lasting impression on me because I didn't think it was actually possible that something this bad could be really be published, even for a mere trading card franchise. The author exhibits the vocabulary of a middle-schooler, though that might be a bit harsh towards middle-schoolers, as I fairly certain they command more verbs than "said", "went", "growled", and "flicked" in their writing. The dialogue is wooden and and banal. If there is an antonym for the phrase "wordsmith", it would accurately describe the author.
The only positive thing I can think to say about Jedit is that it is mercifully short. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to finish it--as it stands, I was only finished the book for the same reason that you would be unable to look away from a terrible train wreck, your jaw slowly descending as car after car derails and hurtles into a growing pile of twisted steel and shattered glass.
Though other books set in the universe might well be literary masterpieces, the fact that the WotC saw fit to publish "Jedit" with their brand has ensured that I've stayed very far away from any other Magic: the Gathering books. Even if you are merely looking for simple, fun, mindless sword-and-sorcery, there are far better books out there.
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