[Gorefest]

I don't think that many people have an issue with NoK, or even RotCG. But from RotCG onwards all the way into Assail, there is a sense that ICE is trying to emulate SE's writing style and multiple character viewpoints, and it simply isn't where his strengths lie. With the Path to Ascendancy prequel series, it feels as if he has thrown off those shackles and now writes much more to his strengths. So NoK was fine because it was relatively short and contained only a few character arcs/viewpoints, which make it a very nice little intermezzo. But ICE just doesn't do convergences as well as SE, which means that in his later Empire books a large number of the character arcs seem a bit contrived, unnatural or even downright pointless. Personally I very much still enjoyed most of the ICE novels, but I fully appreciate why some people might have come to view him as some sort of 'Erikson-lite' based on OST or BnB. Luckily he seems to have found his own voice now with Dancer's Lament and Deadhouse Landing, which are simply awesome.

[Gintokian]

Gorefest, on 12 October 2018 - 10:59 AM, said:

I don't think that many people have an issue with NoK, or even RotCG. But from RotCG onwards all the way into Assail, there is a sense that ICE is trying to emulate SE's writing style and multiple character viewpoints, and it simply isn't where his strengths lie. With the Path to Ascendancy prequel series, it feels as if he has thrown off those shackles and now writes much more to his strengths. So NoK was fine because it was relatively short and contained only a few character arcs/viewpoints, which make it a very nice little intermezzo. But ICE just doesn't do convergences as well as SE, which means that in his later Empire books a large number of the character arcs seem a bit contrived, unnatural or even downright pointless. Personally I very much still enjoyed most of the ICE novels, but I fully appreciate why some people might have come to view him as some sort of 'Erikson-lite' based on OST or BnB. Luckily he seems to have found his own voice now with Dancer's Lament and Deadhouse Landing, which are simply awesome.

That's true, I did enjoy all the ICE books but I do have to admit I found BnB hard to get through. I also found I had to re-read the endings of OST & BnB and come on here to find out what actually happened in their endings since I found it a little too vague. But other than that I did enjoy them, and Path to Ascendancy has been fantastic so far.