POLISHGENIUS: suggest you finish book before reading past this post.
polishgenius, on 09 September 2011 - 11:03 PM, said:
Briar King, on 10 September 2011 - 01:16 AM, said:
polishgenius, on 10 September 2011 - 08:13 AM, said:
I agree that Bk 5 has a different pace from the previous books. It does the 'build and build to huge massive HUGE finish' thing that previous Alera books didn't, and the tension level on the characters pretty much starts high and escalates. I agree with PoGenius that there really aren't any pauses in the book.
That said, I thought it worked. As a general rule i dislike fantasy books where major events only happen at the very end. One of the things i enjoyed most about GotM, DG and MoI is that there are at least four 'climax's' before the actual end of the book... and previous Alera books mostly followed that pattern. But what i thought Butcher did well here was set the tension level right at the start for most of the characters... Gaius/Ehren and Bernard/Amara are thrown right into the Vord invasion, and Isana/Araris have that as a backdrop to their negotiations (which go off the rails IMMEDIATELY). Tavi and co. aren't initially in as much jeapordy but at the halfways mark where we realize what's gone wrong in Cane-ville.
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really? i mean, farm-boy-with-ham-handed-mystery-past aside, i really enjoy how Tavi is at a disadvantage to pretty much everyone yet manages to brain his way through progrssively more fucked up situations. Sure, it's all very D&D... gain experience, level up, gain followers, etc, but unlike say, WoT's Rand, Tavi didn't have the weight of seventeen prophecy or massive power-ups
to help him.