1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unpredictable and brilliant, February 14, 2011
I'll keep this short, I don't often do this but this book deserves at least one review to encourage buyers.
The Wizards and the Warriors is the first of 10 books by Hugh Cook collectively known as The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. It follows a small cast of characters, focusing mainly on the wizards Phyphor, Garash, and Miphon, as well as the warriors Elkor Alish and Morgan Hearst. The plot itself is so full of unexpected twists and turns that I won't even attempt to summarize it.
Cook has a very strange writing style that took some getting used to, but once I had, I grew to love it. The main characters all have very distinct and believable personalities, and there are no Good Guys and Bad Guys (with capital letters to the titles) for whom to cheer or jeer; instead, you get a cast of characters who form and break alliances, work together and against one another, are friends, then enemies, then sometimes friends again. In short, this is definitely not High Fantasy.
What it is is a clever story full of believable characters that you grow to care for because they are flawed. The world is extremely interesting and I highly recommend this book (and writer) to anybody looking for fantasy that isn't quite as cleanly-cut as many of the big names in the genre present it to be.
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