Customer Reviews

The Silver Lake (The Warriors of Estavia)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The God-Wall protects the city of Anavatan, the Silver Lake known as Gol-Beyaz where the six Gods live, and twelve outlying villages. The power and richness of the city is a magnet to the barbarian tribes like the Yuruk who each year unsuccessfully try to breach the wall. The spirits (essences of prophecy) want form and to have that they need to drine from the lake and eat the people unsworn to any God; neither the tribes nor the spirits have managed to breach the wall except this year during theevent known as Havo's Dance.

During the second night of the event, the spirits attack teens Brax, his younger friend Spar, and the malevolent Graize. Brax calls on the God of Battle Estavia for help and she makes him and Spar her own. Graize wakes up spirit filled in the plains where he meets up with a Yuruk tribe who takes him in and prophecies that this year they will be able to breach the God walls because the spirits who want substance will help him. Brax becomes Estavia's champion and is destined to meet Graize in battle, while Spar is trying to find a place for himself without giving in to a seer that speaks to him telepathically and wants to use him in his plans for conquest.

The first book in The Warriors of Estavia is a fantastic fantasy filled with action, intrigue and refreshingly original and realistic characters. The bond between Brax and Spar is beautiful to behold and the pair change over the cycle of the book in a realistic manner as they are shown love combined with discipline. An expert world builder, Fiona Patton actually has her audience believing in Gods who commonly manifest themselves to their people in a physical form.

Harriet Klausner

Not as straight-forward as the Brannion books, but a really interesting read just the same. Point-of-view switches between 4 or 5 main characters, but at least the demarcation is clear and the characters are interesting. Just waiting for the next in the series is going to be hard since we're left hanging slightly at the end.

It took me weeks to finish this off: I just kept on saying "I'll finish it another time" which though completely irrational a behaviour does not exactly argue for the value of this book.

And yet there are so many things to be liked.

This new serial by Ms Patton is explicitly set in an Instambul-like town surrounded by foes who closely resemble Greeks, Slavs and (turkish?) nomadic tribes. Even the book cover and dedication confirm this.

Instead of the expected Islam-like religion (and despite ever present towers strongly resembling minarets) the author prefers to introduce sort of an animistic one, administrated by shamans (called wyrdin, seers and many other names) who try to control an immense variety of spirits of unknown origin for a variety of reasons, including theft, warfare and religious fanatism.
Six of these spirits have infact touched the waters of the lake, an immense reservoir of mystical power, becoming actual, powerful (but not allmighty) gods.

One may also add that Ms Patton has developped further some ideas about society previously found in her Branion series.
In this new world of hers there are men, women and bigenders (these last sometimes able to shift from one extreme to the other of their sexuality, seemingly at will), all perfectly equal and equally strong (two of the six gods are bigender).
If gender is irrelevant, sexual orientation is a non issue (two important side character, Kemal and Yashar, are well respected soldiers and are in a passionate long term relationship without anyone having anything to say about it, not even their female goddess).

Our traditional roles are deliberately annihilated: as in the Branion series honorifics are grammatically invariable and the two goddesses are therefore called "god".
Ms Patton goes further though: if family is the basic cell of this society too, the twist is that the gender of the couple is irrelevant, that there might be no couple at all but just one person, that children love as "parent(s)" the person(s) who take(s) care of them and may be unrelated to them by blood.

All the above is very interesting and refreshing, the writing is to the point and proficient, the plot is well developped (some minor inconsistencies as well as a couple of typos are probably due to the editor), the characters are potentially interesting and yet all this never comes to life.
I was always left cold, the characters likeable but never really alive and I never could relate to them.

Possibly all this mumbling about prophecies, alternative futures, all these vague plot threads to be tied did not help me to get involved: quite a basic flaw in any fantasy novel.

"The Silver Lake" begins "The Warriors of Estavia" saga in the central city of Anavatan surrounded by wild spirits and worshippers to demanding Gods. While it may be puzzling from the different prophetic perspectives, the story skillfully maneuvers between the brothers Brax and Spar, competitor Graize, and warrior Kemal by allowing enough ambiguity and apprehension to the potential insight. Even so the plot remains interesting and continues at an acceptable rate.

The Gods are created through a fascinating relationship between the sworn citizens of Anavatan, spirits, and the Silver Lake. The clever Spar's wit carries Estavia's Champion Brax who only focuses on honing his fighting proficiency. But their adversary Graize is the individual who truly flourishes as he establishes his powers. Although the battle descriptions are adequately depicted, months in the timeline remains unexplained neglecting any potential education and training accounts.

Brief sexual overtones may not be suitable for young readers or those intolerant towards same sex relationships. Better editing would have reduced misplaced words and poor pronunciation. There are various terms intermingled with complex character and city names whose meanings aren't fully clarified. A more detailed map of the significant terrains and comprehensive appendix would have been useful.

Thank you.

You can take it as a given that most of the usual things I talk about are handled wonderfully in The Silver Lake: characterization, pacing, setting; all are rich and amazing. I feel as though it would be superfluous to spend much space on them this time. The one thing I do want to note, however, is that Fiona excels at telling parts of her story from the point of view of someone who would normally be considered a villain, without alienating her readers--her characters are simply too interesting to fit into easy slots in that way.

This series uses a fair number of capitalized and made-up words, which in many authors' hands is a sign of a not-so-good book, but Fiona Patton uses them the way they should be used. Every capitalized word feels like something the characters in the book would consider a proper term in need of capitalization. Every made-up word represents a concept that is easier to discuss and use within the story if it's referred to with one word, and that doesn't have a good immediate analogue in the English language. For instance, familial and working relationships are very different in Anavatan than they are here, and are highly intertwined. The use of specific terms for these different relationships helps the reader to become better immersed within the story world.

Fiona delves so deeply into her world of gods and relationships that this book could have been primarily a theoretical discourse on theology and relationships and the links between them and I still would have found it fascinating. She then also turns it into a pulse-pounding adventure with deadly battles from the smallest knife-fight to an entire raid on a village, and whole nations pitted against each other. She seamlessly stretches levels of head-twisting theory onto a solid framework of peril, love, and hatred.

If you pick up one series this year, let it be this one.

I though this book was convoluted and difficult to read. It was also boring and poorly written.

Having been a fan since The Strone Prince first came out, I was at first dubious as this new series seemed to part so much in environment and atmosphere from the Branion novels.

Well, different it is. And, boy did I love it!!! The one familiar thing to me as I read the first book of this exciting new series is the excellent development of the characters and the description of this new world Fiona introduces to us. I fell in love with the characters. I cared about what they were doing specially because I understood why they were doing it.

I loved this book and I just hate that I will probably have to wait forever to get to read the sequel.