11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Batman Returns?!, March 30, 2005
I'm in awe of Mr. Wright's ability to toss off a summarization of just about every mythology I've ever heard of and probably a few new ones that he snuck in for laughs. This guy could make a plumbing manual interesting. This book is, of course, a sequel. The first Everness book was amazing--the characters just kept coming and they were good ones as well. Be warned, a careful reading of the first novel is necessary to understanding what in the heck is going on. Nevertheless, Wright has a gift for action--his plot never drags.
The Everness books are a fine reminder that we speak a language of story, that our modern entertainments are built upon their predecessors. Who would have imagined Batman as Merlin's heir? How about a Clancyesque American coup d'etat plot based upon seal-men wearing coats of Congressional skin? What would Prometheus do if he were stuck on an aircraft carrier for a couple hours? How about designing an ultra superduper nuke? Inspired.
Mr. Wright joins my automatic purchase list. Nothing this man has written has disappointed in the slightest. The Everness books will become a staple of the genre.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rousing fun, March 15, 2005
A delightful fantasy, part lyrical fairytale, part rousing pulp action, Mists of Everness takes place in modern America and culminates in a roller coaster of dramatic events, during which the heroes and their magic weapons, accompanied by the US military, face off against a dread ancient force from the forgotten dreaming. The characters are charming, particularly Wendy, Raven, and Peter, and even small characters, such as Raven's father or Meadow Mouse (nod to Little, Big there) are well-delineated.
I must disagree with the previous reviewer. I do not see this book as a satire. While it is quite different from many contemporary works in its field - not being in the tradition of Tolkien and the pastoral fantasies - I do not believe the differences are intended to mock or poke fun at other writers. Rather, the story is a marriage of fairytales, myths, and 1940's pulps, offering a tribute to these earlier works, while still standing on its own. Over all a very amusing and worthwhile read.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Anything but average, July 31, 2006
This review is from: Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) (Mass Market Paperback)
This is one of those books that receives an average rating even though nothing about it is average. Rather, it features a combination of several above-average qualities with much that is unfortunately below.
What is there to like? First of all, the sheer inventiveness of the plot. Wright is well aware of his antecedents -- including Zelazny's Amber chronicles and Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels -- but has crafted a thoroughly contemporary take on some of the same building blocks, one outside the realm of cookie-cutter conventional fantasy. What if, the story asks, a family with a generations-old task is finally called upon to perform the task and fulfill a prophesy...but they stop to think about it, and decide that performing their task may not be the best solution for the world after all? That's the question that defines the surface of the story told by the Everness books.
The other chief aspect I enjoyed was the style of writing. Wright has a unique and distinctive writing style. Nothing is ever described in detail, yet Wright chains together great masses of words and concepts to shape the mood of each scene. Consider the following sample, wherein Raven, one of our heroes, travels through a city of torture on the dark side of the moon to the rescue of another character:
"There were barred gates hanging open at each crossroads, with lines of heads on spikes above, mummified by the lunar air. The next street was lined on both sides with starvation cages, and the one beyond that was lined with impaling screws.
They turned again, passed a gate hung with severed hands. In the near distance was the central dome. The archstone of the main gates had the head of a medusa hanging from it, with hair of snakes and eyes of viper-hate.
Even the shadow of the medusa in the mirror was almost too much for Raven; there was a stinging pain in his eyes, and he felt faint. [...] When he recovered, they crossed over a moat filled with blood into the shadow of the central dome."
Not all or even most of the book is this grim, but this gives you an idea of what the writing is like: ideas like a lunar city, a moat filled with blood are just casually tossed out, and while the level of detail is minimal, the quantity of things mentioned is unrelenting. Some readers may not like this -- certainly I wouldn't like all books to be written this way -- but I enjoyed the writing for its uniqueness and audacity, and for the way it conveyed mood by constant reinforcement of concepts.
I must also say that I found the selkie to be the most entertaining villains since Croup and Vandemar in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere: in many ways the addition of humor makes the horror of the selkie actions that much more real and terrible.
Unfortunately the unrelenting action of Wright's style of writing does highlight one of the books main shortcomings: the characters, or rather the lack thereof. Characters young and old do not really develop over the course of these books; they are presented with little or no background or personal information, act according to a fairly narrow set of characteristics, and finish the book much as they began. Fantasy of course is ripe for symbolic characters, but those here are more stereotypes than symbols, because we never see enough of them, get to know them well enough, to see them as human (or as close to human as they're meant to be). As has been pointed out in other reviews, this is particularly true of the female characters, who appear to want nothing more out of life than to be interrupted and kissed senseless (Wendy is bad enough, but there is also a scene with Titania that was just silly).
The other big negative, also mentioned by other reviews, is Wright's tendency to preach his philosophical ideals and political-economic ideas. Preaching, to me, is when characters make speeches unasked for and unnecessarily: when Anton explains why he has no wish to be President is a perfect example, as his speech doesn't really answer the question at hand. The sad thing is that Wright maintains a proper narrative distance for the first book and a half in this series, with ideas present but not preached. The tone only becomes preachy in the last 100-200 pages, but because the ending is our final experience of the work and presents the solutions on which the story hinges, that preachy tone really damages the impression of the work as a whole. It is especially an issue because the characters are so underdeveloped: they are such figureheads, it's impossible to see their words as coming from their own personal belief systems, as opposed to mouthpieces for the author. And of course the lack of characterization also damages any points the author wishes to make, because if the only people who could thrive in the world he desires are magic-wielding archetypes as opposed to normal humans, that's not a world most of us are capable of thriving in.
All told then this is a curious book. Readers desiring thoughtful, sympathetic characters should stay away. Readers desiring lots of detail should stay away. Readers who have read a fair amount of speculative fiction, who need a minimum of words to put a picture in their heads, who can overlook a bit of proselytizing, and who are looking for something different than the usual genre fair, may well find this a welcome break from the norm.
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