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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A nice read, though it feels rushed,
By Esn024 "esn024" (Toronto, CANADA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Plains of the Sea: Wilderness of Four, No. 2 (Paperback)
If you're a fan of Hancock's writing (as I am), you'll like this book for its strengths and overlook its weaknesses, even though some of them are quite obvious. This 2nd volume of the Wilderness of Four series has some very fine and charming writing interspersed throughout, with the overall ideas largely inspired by Lord of the Rings but with some original twists. It can be quite inspired and wondrous when you least expect it, and is almost always an enjoyable read even when it's not.But it also gives the impression of having been written in a hurry. I got the distinct notion that Hancock would often set up a direction for the story to go in, only to then get bored with that and have it veer somewhere else entirely. This happens at least 10 times. Fair enough - it keeps the book from becoming too predictable - but it can also be unsatisfying when something that was set up earlier is never really resolved (one example: the character of a dwarf leader who is first made out to be a vicious closed-minded tyrant, then hinted to be possibly a good leader, then possibly not closed-minded... and after all of that ink written about him, he quickly disappears from the story before anything can be really resolved). The last chapter of the book is extremely short and very succinct, as if the author had to quickly finish things up because the deadline was approaching and he had taken too long on the first arc of the story. It feels like there was no time to go back and polish things up, either. And because of that, some major bloopers and improbable timelines are left in. For example, in the first part of the book they travel south along an underground river that is described as going to the southern sea (and is shown in the map as such). Why, then, does the story describe them traveling UPstream? And how exactly does a race of creatures go from being almost unknown to overrunning well-defended settlements with huge armies within a matter of days? Things very often happen too quickly to be plausible - in almost every event in the book, the characters seem to arrive at JUST the right moment in time to catch something that had been building up for months or years before. And so, you need to be understanding as a reader sometimes and not examine the logic of things too closely. The main character's transition from more-or-less an awkward social outcast to a respected leader is pulled off, kind of, but like many of the other plot points feels a bit wobbly and happens a bit too fast. Still, I enjoyed the book on the whole. The warm personality of the author makes up for a lot of structural flaws.
3.0 out of 5 stars
In Book 2 we meet Elfs and Dwarfs,
By
This review is from: The Plains of the Sea: Wilderness of Four, No. 2 (Paperback)
The Plains of the Sea is book 2 in the four book series Wilderness of the Four.This is a story set in Alanton Earth - a fantasy world location similar in some respects to Tolkien's Middle Earth or the Narnia of C.S. Lewis.
This book is akin in subject matter to the first book in the Wilderness of the Four series "Across The Far Mountains". The reader is introduced to a diverse collection of beings that are assembling together for a mysterious and dangerous journey to the sea. The travelers are assistance at critical junctures by a magical amulet and by creatures with supernatural powers. The reason for the journey, why they are opposed by hordes of murderous enemies and what is expected of them when they arrive at the seashore in never made clear. Some will claim that the mystery of these unidentified plot motivations is the charm of these books. Brian Brandigore is a dwarf who is ridiculed by his friends because he believes the old legends and tales spun by the blind lore-teller Chinby. Even his parents chide him for wasting his time looking for legendary tunnels and highways under the cozy underground dwarf homesteads or delvings. Not by chance, one day while probing in a deep cavern, he meets up with an Elf named Shannon. We learn that the relationship between elves and dwarfs, once civil, have devolved to one of mutual suspicion. Finding an elf in a legendary digging causes Brian great alarm. Even more disconcerting is that the Elf seems familiar with traveling in the secret world underground believed by dwarfs to be their exclusive territory. As the story developed elf and dwarf become good friends and it turns out that Shannon has been given the task of aiding Brian on his journey. Although never explained in any detain Brian has been selected to be one of the leaders in a future confrontation with the Darkness. There are many other plot threads winding throughout this story. Overriding everything is the odd references alluding to knowledge of events already having taken place in either the past or the future. Head scratching quotes like that following are left for the reader to decipher: "The way they were speaking of it [death] wasn't the end of anything at all but another mere changing of scene along an unending road." To say the least this is an exasperating book to read. The reader must buy-in to the author's method of creating a fantasy world revealed in a series of inscrutable fragments. This requires a level of perseverance to read all four books that at times boarders on the ridiculous.
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