Customer Reviews

Lords of the Sky

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The quality of writing in this book is above average. The book starts out with beautiful prose that distracts somewhat from the story, but the distraction soon passes.

The story is set in a world in which the existence of magic is fairly well integrated into the history of the milieu (as opposed to just being slapped on, without thought to historical consequence of people having access to power that doesn't exist in the real world, as most writers do).

This is a story about racial prejudice, injustice, loyalty, morality, and ethics; with the issue of the ability to create life thrown in for good measure. I think the author does a stellar job in dealing with all three.

Three races are wrapped up in affairs relating to this issue (there is a fourth race, but they are of less importance to the story overall). The first race, humanity, has simultaneously moved into a geographical area, discovered magic, and created a new set of races from domestic animals that look like humans, but have little thought capacity. Humanity does this because the fourth race, dragons, are eating humanity up at a frightening pace, and the humans throw the new created races to the dragons as food (and a few of these new races are kept around as servants). This group of humans migrates away from the dragons, and discovers a more primitive race of man, and promptly enslaves them and destroys their temples. Some of this more primitive race escape to a new homeland. There, this third race rebuilds, and thousands of years later have begun an ongoing campagin of revenge against the first race of humans in a quest to regain their homelands. Into all this is thrown the twinkling of an idea that maybe the second race, created by the humans as dragonbait and servants millennia ago, isn't as bovine/dog-brained/catlike-independent as the first race has been thinking.

So many books end abruptly, with the characters either winning through their problem (one way or another), and then "everything is all right" and the world continues on. Not so for this book. The book goes on to the end of the last character's life. We see all the consequences of their actions and decisions during the story.

This book has a strong single viewpoint that I found enormously entertaining, the author almost never leaves the main character. No constant hopping around from character to character.

I'm glad I read it.

The book is very great, and invokes all sorts of emotions. This is one of those books where the romance is pretty decent ( in a fantasy type of way of course). Surely beats the romance from his Exiles Saga where the girl Flysse is too stubborn in her ways, and the gentleman Arcole becomes all meek! Matter of fact, this book was very well paced compared to Exiles. Made you keep reading, and I didn't think there was really any too slow parts, and this is probably one of the very few books in teh fantasy genre that is well written in the 1st person.

You can read from other reviews what this book is about so I am not really going to comment on that. Very well written and all, the only thing that could've worked out better is the actual "behavior" of the characters and the things they do. I.E. The fact that the authority figure from each race would meekly submit after so many centuries of fixed hatred and opinions is pushing a little. But even more than that, the concept of means and end is little backwards.

The author seems to think that peace can be won from total destruction of concentration of power that oppose them, not to mention innocent slaughtered for this same peace. I understand fantasy is beyond this world, but since they're about humans, the author should at least follow the same value system we have present in our current world. Learn from our own history to know that what he is proposing won't work (i.e. Germany after the end of World War I).

But this disagreement is just on an opinion, and not on the quality of writing.

Recently the fantasy bug, that comes and goes, has bitten me again. Not wanting to make the commitment to a series, I picked up Lords of the Sky. All in all I was very pleased. As has been stated by nearly every other reviewer, Lords of the Sky, by Angus Wells, is very well written. That is to say the writing style flows well, is colorful, poetic and romantic. The characters - Daviot the Storyteller, Rwan the Mage, Urt the "changed" servant turned leader and Tezdal, the warrior (male, female, male, male, respectively) - are immediately appealing, interesting and identifiable. The reader gets to know them quickly and intimately. Things are explained well and not just taken as is. You feel for these people and their rich chronicles. It has every aspect and characteristic of a great fantasy epic except for one key element; It's only one book. A long book (650 pages), but one book. If one is going to spend so many, many pages establishing characters and histories - in an engaging and exciting way, mind you - than one should spend at least a decent amount of time bringing all of these pieces to closure. At the end of the book there is a lot of telling about what happens and a less amount of showing what happens. Wells spends the last 15% of the book closing the first 85%, and it ended up being a little, just a little, rushed. Still, all questions are answered. No loose ends. It has all the potential of a Stephen Donaldson or a Robert Jordan series. In defense of Angus Wells, he did mention in his closing notes that the book was originally longer and that his editor had him chop it up a good amount. Perhaps she should have let him keep it the length he wanted to write it. Also there was a jolting change of point-of-view segue right in the middle of the book. We read through the main character's eyes - Daviot - when suddenly the storyline changes. We need to know this new information, yes, but Wells completely stops one to start the other. There are no back and forth chapters, which I myself prefer. There is 300 pages of this POV, then there is about 100 pages of that POV. Fortunately the storylines converge perfectly. Finally the main characters, at the end of the book - characters we've grown to care for - go through a major, and rather de-humanizing change. In all the best books characters do change, but it's along the lines of "something lost, something gained." In Lords of the Sky, the characters, at the end, gain much, but they loose much more; they lose what drew us to them for the first 500 or so pages. With all this said, I still HIGHLY recommend this book. It's intense, deep, powerful and resonant of excellent storytelling.

I did like this book, probably more than many because I didn't pay $25 for it! But that's not the correct standard to apply. It's a fun read. But it's also a frustrating read. I typically don't enjoy first person fantasy, find it needlessly restrictive. But, it does help the story move along, so you take the good with the bad.

I had problems, though, with switching perspective from first person to third person...call me old school. Really bugged me in a couple cross-country updates.

I did think there was much to praise about this book. The notion that if you forget your history, you're bound to suffer. The idea of "changed" human/animal beings doing tasks with a basic level of intelligence and then rising up against their masters. The characteristic that being kind to everyone, regardless of station, has unexpected rewards. If it wasn't for the sex, I'd recommend this to my daughter. I also really enjoyed how much his character from a fishing village enjoyed taking baths! An interesting detail either of the character or Mr. Wells! Most authors skip this, which I find annoying, but again a necessary component of first person writing.

Anyways, it's the first Angus Wells I've read. And I will read some more from him. I liked his approach to the story which was to make this an adventure without letting "craft" drive things to a crawl. I liked the pace and wished the end wasn't quite so chopped. Won't be mistaken for Kay, Martin, Hobb, Eddings, Lawhead, Farland, etc. But definitely stacks up with some of the GOOD books out there.

This was the first book that exposed me to the world of fantasy fiction. There was a mixture of love, hate, power and struggle amongst the characters and not only did Wells did a superb job at bringing the characters alive in my mind, this book provided cues to our every day lives, especially when dealing with people of different cultures and races. The description of the sceneries was vivid and the romance between Daviot and Rwyan added spice to the story. Read it and be captivated !

As a rule, whenever the main character's horse has more personality than the main character, you know you have problems. There isn't anything that is glaringly wrong with "Lords of the Sky", but there isn't much that's right with it either. The story is one that any fantasy fan must know by heart. We start with a young boy named Daviot who lives in a quaint seaside village and knows that his people are threatened by sinister invaders known as the "Sky Lords". Daviot soon learns that he has great magical powers, and leaves to be tutored in a foreign city, falls in love with a beautiful woman, makes friends and allies, and learns 'surprising' facts about the history of his people. Will he and his band of friends be able to unlock the necessary secrets in time to save his homeland from destruction? I won't give away the ending. Angus Wells, on the other hand, isn't so conscientious. He drops blatantly obvious clues almost from the start of the book, so any discerning reader will find it easy to predict not only how the book will end, but also exactly where the heroes will go and what they will do at almost every step along the way.

The writing is generally weak, with too much repetition and emphasis on mannerisms rather than character development. The main character often feels his throat being clogged several times on the same page, and people's faces turn red more times than I can count. There are many occasions where characters spout dialogue for several pages on end without any attempt to make it sound like real human interaction. Description is nothing special, and the concluding sequences don't come close to having the narrative power that they should have. Wells makes the distracting choice of telling some of the story in the first person, but unnecessarily shifting to other viewpoints whenever he grows tired of his main character.

It is to the author's misfortune that I picked up this work shortly after finishing Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy, a series of books with a similar plot but vastly superior implementation. Hobb masterfully blended elements of courtly intrigue into her story, but the few mentions of political manipulations in "Lords of the Sky" feel tacked-on. Hobb gave her cast of characters a variety of original and frightening magical talents, but Wells' wizards are limited to old standbys like enhanced memory and shooting bolts of fire. Most importantly, Hobb actually went into the minds of her characters while Wells is content to stick with stock characters and clichés. I wouldn't deem "Lords of the Sky" to be the worst book I've ever read, but we're undergoing a golden age of high fantasy right now, and there's no reason for fans of the genre to content themselves with mediocre work like this.

When I started this book I didn't think I was going to like it. It wasn't bad or anything but it was moving at a slow pace early on and I was itching to read some other authors books that I had on my shelf. I am glad I didn't put this one down. It is told almost entirely in first person and while that sometimes doesn't work, I feel this book wouldn't have worked if it wasn't told that way. It is also a stand alone fantasy novel and that originally turned me off as well as I have often found fantasy novels work best in a series form where we truly get to know the world we are reading and the characters.

But this one was wonderfully descriptive and had suprising depth. I truly liked the characters and the idea of the main hero of the storyteller not being a warrior, wizard or a Knight but a Storyteller was intriguing. The storytellers are known in the book as a Rememberer or a Mnemonikos, and it is a prestigious rank as they can never forget anything. I found it original and not boring in the least as there was plenty of action to go around.

Again this book does start off a bit slow in the sense that you don't really feel any attachment or interest in the main characters until about 60-100 pages in. Or maybe it was just me. But either way, once I got into the book I could not put it down. I recommend this book highly.

The book is very great, and invokes all sorts of emotions. This is one of those books where the romance is pretty decent ( in a fantasy type of way of course). Surely beats the romance from his Exiles Saga where the girl Flysse is too stubborn in her ways, and the gentleman Arcole becomes all meek! Matter of fact, this book was very well paced compared to Exiles. Made you keep reading, and I didn't think there was really any too slow parts, and this is probably one of the very few books in teh fantasy genre that is well written in the 1st person.

You can read from other reviews what this book is about so I am not really going to comment on that. Very well written and all, the only thing that could've worked out better is the actual "behavior" of the characters and the things they do. I.E. The fact that the authority figure from each race would meekly submit after so many centuries of fixed hatred and opinions is pushing a little. But even more than that, the concept of means and end is little backwards.

The author seems to think that peace can be won from total destruction of concentration of power that oppose them, not to mention innocent slaughtered for this same peace. I understand fantasy is beyond this world, but since they're about humans, the author should at least follow the same value system we have present in our current world. Learn from our own history to know that what he is proposing won't work (i.e. Germany after the end of World War I).

But this disagreement is just on an opinion, and not on the quality of writing.

I've read a few hundred fantasy books and while I prefer series to single books, I found that I liked this one extremely well. In multiple book series, you get to know the characters and see them change. You grow to like/dislike these characters. This is one of the remarkably few books where you get to see all this happen in only a few hundred pages in only ONE book. This is my favorite book in only one volume series. It evoked emotions which only a dozen other books have done. I suggest this book to anyone who wants a true classic in their possession.

Great read. In my opinion one can see the improvements in style and character development simply by reading his other series. Lords of the Sky clearly stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of his previous work, but hopefully is only a taste of what will be offered in the future