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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
I really don't want to dwell on this one. Suffice to say, I read the first three many moons ago and found them enjoyable enough. I remember quitting this one about half way through for reasons I cannot remember. Jump forward some 27 years later and I finally have another copy in my hand and decide to give it a go.It's dull. All the bat s**t crazy ideas and pulp fire gusto that made the first three worthwhile had been driven out by the standard Tor Books High Fantasy style of writing. The sort of writing then being popularised by Robert Jordan that ultimately helped crush the field of sword-&-sorcery under weighty tomes of churned out fantasy soap operas. Gath of Baal, the Death Dealer, hardly lifts a finger for the first half of the book. Instead we are drawn into James Silke's obsessional world of travelling players and troubadours. Characters that would not seem out of place in a DRAGONLANCE novel take centre stage. Death Dealer, far from dealing carnage right left and centre, roaring his challenge under blood soaked skies, is left skulking in the wings like some forgotten understudy. Chapter after chapter deals alternately with the perversions of the central villainess and the purity of the virginial heroine who is so insipid as to not draw sympathy from the reader but rolling eyes. "On with the show!", I cry from the gallery. But to no avail, alas. The action, when it finally does come, is anti-climatic and drawn out. Is it possible to yawn during a siege melee that involves archers and demonically possessed savages? Well, this reader did. Coming to the end of the novel, I threw the book down on the table with a huge sigh of relief. After this there was no more Death Dealer. There was no need. There was no need for another Robert Jordan at Tor Books.
