Tad Williams, you owe me $7.
I bought this book on a whim, as part of a little retail therapy. Well, that's why I bought *a* book. I bought *this* book because the cover features an endorsement by Tad Williams, a brilliant sci-fi/fantasy writer whose Otherland series is awesome.
So either Tad's standards are way lower than mine, or he sold out, or he was shamefully misquoted and should sue someone. If it's b or c, I feel I deserve to get me a piece of that pie. I don't need a full refund- half of my $15 investment would be OK.
Alright, alright, on to the actual review. The book is OK. Just OK. I did read it all the way through, as there is a hint of a worthwhile fantasy topic in there. But although the third "book" (this is a three-in-one deal) got just a hair more complex as the key mystery is revealed, the finish was as lackluster as the rest of it. Anti-climax doesn't begin to describe.
Nicholls likes to write detailed, gory fight scenes - thrusting swords, knuckles cracking, stumbling on bodies. OK, fine. He likes to write some detailed dialogue. OK, fine. A lot of the dialogue was pretty simplistic and repetitive, creating characters that have 1.5 dimensions at best. Yeah, I get it - person A and person B like to bicker. Person C is touchy about his age. Still. Again.
The plot? Super thin, and rather simplistic. Maybe appropriate for a high schooler, or someone just getting into the fantasy genre. Character development is barebones, even for the main plot-driving characters. Secondary folks are kind of like those cardboard cutouts at the mall, except some of them get to speak.
There are a ton of logistical details that make little to no sense. The world that Nicholls' characters are moving around in sometimes seems like it might be smaller than the state of California, and yet he's got a bunch of races (some completely gratuitous and distracting) and cities and climates crammed in there like a junk drawer. Some scenes/transitions make you want to believe that there's a real world in there, like The Wheel of Time or Otherland or even Diamond Age. But Nicholls didn't make enough room for all that- people can travel too quickly from one spot to another, and given the apparent population-density, armies of the size that he describes are completely impossible.
The book is positioned as if it's this great revelation into "the world of orcs", but Nicholls' orcs are just agressive humans with different skin, who expend a lot of dialogue on how orcish they are, while they behave just like humans in 8 out of 10 ways. Ironic? maybe, but not terribly innovative or revelatory.
I could go on, but I won't bother. Overall, it provided a mild distraction and that's about it...
