![Forging Divinity (The War of Broken Mirrors Book 1) by [Rowe, Andrew]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51n%2ByRdSbPL._SY346_.jpg)
Edit: I'm changing my rating to 3 stars, as I feel a 2 star rating for writing of this caliber is uncharitable. My personal enjoyment of the material is more on a 2 star level, however.
Where to start? Positives, I suppose.
- The writing is tight. No overlong exposition or unnecessary detail, prose is average or slightly better. Editing is quite a large step up from most self-pubs.
- Characters are well drawn and very distinct, though virtually zero development occurs (more on that later). Many self-pub writers have difficulty writing easily distinguishable characters. Not so, in this case.
- There was an air of mystery about the primary characters. The book is written from three distinct POVs, and each time we get a little bit of info on their reactions and motivations, but it’s only enough to give a glimpse of who they really are (I thought – more on this later). There are hints of rich backstory to flesh out each character.
- The opening really grabbed me – legendary sword of unknown power and its mysterious wielder pairing up with a powerful undercover sorceress,
Unfortunately, after the first 30-40% of the book, none of the promise that seemed so rich early in was delivered upon. The cons started to pile up, and never really stopped mounting for me:
- The magic system is neat, but execution is flawed; there’s very little consistency. Some characters need auditory cues to “cast”, some don’t, some need gestures, some don’t. Each person is supposed to be bounded by affinity for a limited number of “dominions” (e.g. dreams, knowledge, metal, fire, etc), but the author plays extremely fast and loose with what can be done with each of these. It really seems that he made the system up, then just allowed the various characters to do whatever they tried to do with the only limit being how powerful they were within their domain.
- The characters are extremely flat and uninteresting. There was only the barest hint of character development. It took a while to find out that they really don’t have much depth. In the end, they’re pretty much caricatures more than they are characters.
Taelien is kind, gregarious, chivalrous and dumb. He acts like a complete child and this never changes. Other characters view him this way, and it fits because that’s pretty much exactly what he is. A very powerful child, but a child nonetheless. He takes his cues from Lydia throughout the book, and is pretty much powerless to act with any autonomy whatsoever.
Lydia is an overbearing, condescending, arrogant bully who feels it’s her right to impose her will on others wherever she goes. The character of Moiraine in WoT fits her pretty much like a glove…except when you realize that that’s completely ridiculous because she’s about 20, and Moiraine is supposed to be over 70 or something. She thinks of (and actually refers to) Taelien as a child and mothers him the entire way through the book. She acts in a similar manner to pretty much anyone else. Some of this can be explained away when she needs to be in her frosty court sorceress persona, but early in the book she reflects on the great disparity between her undercover “ice queen” persona, and her natural, more friendly and compassionate self. Unfortunately this is just fluff, because we see only the tiniest bit of evidence that she might not actually be the former through and through. She’s calculating and thoughtful, but mostly to no real effect. She’s often afflicted with analysis paralysis, and progress pretty much just falls into her lap.
Jonan was full of potential. Many reviewers called him the rogue. The funny, fun-loving sidekick. Somewhat appropriate, but his character is very similar to Lydia (intelligent and calculating, distrustful) excepting the fact that he pretty much acts like a doormat.
- Characters go through the story helping others and doing things for completely inexplicable reasons. Taelien gets thrown in prison in the beginning for some reason completely unknown to him. Lydia helps break him out, and for some reason he continues to follow her like a puppy at her vague agreement to help him with his quest to find out more about himself. Now, if I had a clear goal, like find some guy (who I’ve been told can help me figure out my lineage and birthright), unless somebody or something is going to imminently help me get at this goal, I’m going to part ways from it. Instead, he gets distracted *constantly* with what I refer to as “side quests”. He’s helping a cause that he doesn’t even appear to have a strong moral reason to support. Jonan does much the same. For some reason Jonan bands together with these two people (Lydia and Taelien) that assaulted him, took him prisoner, and interrogated him, despite the fact that their ideologies are ostensibly at ends with one another. What? Later, another character attacks him by breaking into his home and smashing valuable belongings critical to his magic, and he just shrugs it off and offers to assist her for some reason. Again, what? This kind of behavior is everywhere too.
- The pace of the book is worse than glacial. I read hundreds of pages of idle talk or inner monologue with no meaningful activity whatsoever. The vast bulk of the book covers discussions that occur in a matter of moments, much of it being an inner monologue from the current POV character. Eventually it just feels like a lot of churn for no reason.
- The world building seemed flat. It surprised me that so many reviewers felt that this was a strong point of the novel. Then again, I categorize magic system as just that, and not related necessarily to world building. World building - to me - tells the story of the people, their cultures, their philosophy, their politics, their technological maturity, their regions and regional disputes, their resources, and so forth. I feel this novel did almost none of that. The only sense I got that the nations were different at all was the fact that they worshiped different gods. I couldn’t get a sense that there was any differentiation of ethnicities within the races (if there even were), and even the races were only described in the broadest terms.
Overall, the book just felt dull and uninteresting, and I didn't identify with the characters one bit. I was very disappointed since it got rather good reviews and the beginning really grabbed me. I won’t be reading the second.
- File Size: 2267 KB
- Print Length: 310 pages
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
- Publication Date: February 12, 2015
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00TKFFR36
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
-
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#24,130 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #691 in Sword & Sorcery Fantasy eBooks
- #275 in Metaphysical Fantasy eBooks
- #392 in Fantasy Adventure Fiction
Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, 
