2.0 out of 5 stars
Bogs Down the Reader, July 10, 2008
This review is from: Nimuar's Loss: Book One of the Vildecaz Talents (Bk. 1) (Paperback)
Reviewed by Jeannine R. Burkholder
on 07/10/2008
Getting lost in fantasy worlds can be a great escape from reality. Finely-crafted worlds with their own characters, languages, and cultural traditions make classic stories memorable. However, Camille Gabor's Nimaur's Loss is a fantasy that creates a world in so much detail that the reader gets bogged down and lost in the vocabulary, causing one to spend more time deciphering name pronunciation and researching the twenty-two page glossary than actually reading the story.
As the beginning of a series, it does make sense that this book would have a lot of the "set-up" qualities to pave the way for the books to come. Unfortunately, when this is combined with a mediocre plot and an unsatisfying ending, it begs the question of why one would want to waste time on the rest of the series.
1.5 Books
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Great start to the story, disappointingly truncated, May 30, 2007
This review is from: Nimuar's Loss: Book One of the Vildecaz Talents (Bk. 1) (Paperback)
"Nimaur's Loss" is an engaging fantasy story featuring two sisters with different magic powers. Erianthee can craft entertainments out of thin air and is often called upon to retell folk tales or stories in society gatherings. Her sister Ninianee can communicate with animals but also has a secret know to just her sister and her father, that for three nights around the full moon she turns into an animal, either prey or predator.
The sisters and their father are part of the nobility of Vildecaz and find themselves embroiled in political machinations as their society's requirement for hospitality means that they have to host several groups of people, some of whom may be plotting against them. Nimuar, the sisters' father, had his magical powers severely depleted many years ago by a perfidious magician Yulko Bihn who is now visiting their castle with a mysterious woman in tow, no doubt bent on more mischief and apparently also interested in the location of Agnith's Treasure, about which Nimuar is researching in various old books, becoming almost a hermit.
I was a little confused by some of the spelling in this book; the cover artwork has "Nimaur's" but throughout the text inside the man's name is spelled "Nimuar". There are a lot of other strange words used for clothing and some foods which add to the exotic feel of the book and were amusing but also sometimes distracting from the story. The world that the author has created is well built in a quasi-mediaeval setting and the lavish descriptions of meals and of clothing were enjoyable to read, if somewhat redundant.
However the huge overall disappointment was the way that the book suddenly stopped, in the middle of the plot, with no real explanation of what was happening. No doubt the story will continue in the next book in the series but this first book didn't resolve in any way, the two faint love interests remained just that, and many of the questions thrown up as the story progressed were left unanswered. It seems rather unfair on the reader to have to wait for the next book to be published before really getting into the story, especially as the scene was set so well in this book. However I do like a beginning, middle and end to a novel and this book seemed to only really contain the beginning and part of the middle and thus left me feeling a little cheated.
Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book, [...]
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