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123 of 126 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Her best book yet!, March 22, 2004
I've read all of Carol Berg's novels and Son of Avonar is by far her best. She has evolved as a writer and storyteller and has managed to create something refreshing and new in the field of Fantasy - believable, fallible and human characters. Her character work has always been her strong suit, in that even minor characters are usually fairly well fleshed out. But this book (the first in a trilogy) is a self-contained masterpiece. You could read this book and go no further. I was sure she would hang me out on a cliff like most Fantasy authors do in a multi-book collection, but she wrapped it up nicely at the end, left me wanting so much more but not suffering using tired devices to keep my interest. This is a moving story, the flashbacks (another device that I never think is used well, though her weaving of it into the present made me look for the past with equal anticipation) lend so much weight to the story and it is heavy despairing stuff, the kind that makes your fist clench in agony as you are reading it. I kept thinking, dear God, no, no, no, for it was too devastating to consider because from the moment you meet the heroine, Seriana, she has you at her side, understanding her, feeling her loneliness and deep sadness. Yet her strength is amazing; amazing, but real. It is the kind of strength of the human variety not super hero. There is a love story here too, a beautiful love story that too is very real. One of the other reviewers said her words jump off the page - and they do - it is a very active story and the writing is filled with electric energy. It is spare; Hemingway-esque actually at points, without anything overblown. Utterly readable it is a page turner - you will fight to break away from it and probably will not be able to. Make sure you have time set aside and just read it straight through. I am thrilled to have had the pleasure to read this book and hope against hope that in the series they only continue to get better. I do have what I call Matrix-anxiety about sequels but I have faith that Carol Berg is up to the task. If she sticks to a similar format where each book is inclusive to itself I believe she will have a sure-fire hit on her hands. And finally thank you Carol Berg for FINALLY creating some characters who are not fourteen year old virgins! Seriana is thirty-five years old, a grown woman and I identified wit her much more than some unrealistic portrayal of a teenage princess or a twenty-something who has never been let out of a castle. Seri is all woman, her own woman, educated, bright, resourceful, but makes mistakes in judgment and often can't see the bigger picture. Just like a real woman. Carol Berg had my interest with her other books but now she has a fan!
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45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A little too Scooby-Doo, June 18, 2004
If there's one thing Carol Berg it good at, it's redeeming fallen characters. Her first published work, Transformation, remains her most successful, but this book's derivation of that storyline also works well. Once again, we have an older, emotionally and physically scarred character who reluctantly draws a younger, haughty boy into an understanding of himself. What sets this book apart from Transformation is that the older character is female, and there's a significant plot twist in the young man's self-discovery. Berg also attempts a more experimental narrative form for this book. Present-time action interweaves with a past that's compelling even though we already know it ends tragically. Ideally, this form would do better than a chronological storyline at giving the past power to illuminate the present. I think that's what Berg was aiming for, and I admire her for attempting it. However, my own opinion is that this would have been better off as two separate books. The suspense would have been drawn out much more in the first story by not knowing the tragic ending, and experiencing that along with the characters would mean more suspense in hoping for a happy resolution to the second storyline. That being said, I still recommend reading this since the two stories are moving enough to make it worthwhile. My only serious disappointment came at the end of Son of Avonar. The true nature of a number of characters is revealed, but the way it all happens seems very much like the end of an episode of Scooby-Doo: everyone is unmasked at once, requiring a huge amount of exposition to fill in the backstory of why they aren't who we thought they were. In fact, Berg has to bring in a whole new character at the last minute just to cover all that exposition. It's nice to face some surprising plot twists, but it would have been better if there had been more hints of what was to come before the big reveal. That would have made the twisty ending seem more natural. Nevertheless, I do recommend this book. The characters are fully realized and interestingly flawed, and I was sucked in enough that I was very disappointed to discover we have to wait until the fall for a sequel.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It was all right--3.5 stars, July 22, 2006
The writing for Son of Avonar was lovely. The setting was good as well. The concept of magic was fanastic. The dialogue was great, and many of the characters were just brilliant...in the slang sense of the word.
Why did this novel get 3.5 stars, then?
1) It was very predictable. I was not surprised at anything--but the main character (someone who was supposed to be fairly intelligent) was stunned breathless. Hm...
2) The main character was supposed to be fairly intelligent. All those years in exile should have hardened her resolve and made her less naive and less foolish, yet she makes mistakes as if she had never done a hard day's work.
3)The main theme was...lacking. It could have had a powerful effect, Seri coming to realize what she had never understood. Yet, it was not powerful. It came across as a theme slapped on too late and only kneaded in partially.
I did enjoy it, however, when I was not slapping my forehead at the general stupidty of the characters. One stupid character is all right, and two is fine. Three is pushing it, but when the characters that are supposedly smart are making dumb errors, you know something is off. I do recommend it to anyone in the mood for a pleasant fantasy novel, but do not expect a knock-your-socks-off work.
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