Monday, March 21, 2016

A Crown for Cold Silver by Alex Marshall

2.5 STARS

Crimson Empire - Book 1

Well, this is the first disappointment of 2016 for me. A Crown for Cold Silver was recommended and lauded by so many fantasy blogs and on many lists but for the life of me, I don't know why.

At 650 pages, this is one hefty novel! It's that long because there are pages and pages and pages of exposition and internal debate and just plain blah-blah-blah. It never went anywhere! 650 pages of introducing the characters and discovering their motivations and even then... EVEN THEN, I'm not clear on much of it. I don't know how many times I muttered Just get on with it! under my breath.

Most of the characters showed hints of being interesting, a few even became so, but there was so much blathering going on that this development was often lost. And I had a problem in that I kept mixing up two of them. Two of the 5 Villains. They're important characters and I shouldn't have kept confusing them, but there you go.

At times, some of the dialogue/inner dialogue was jarring because all of a sudden words from our 2016 reality were thrown in. Dude? Really? And also... there is tons of world-building, much of which is interesting and intriguing (but FAR too heavily explained) and there are new and different things the, all of a sudden, they're mentioning VINDALOO??? Makes no freaking sense to me.

So in the end, the book/series that I was looking forward to, let me down. I'm in no rush to purchase the next book. Maybe if it shows up on my $1.99 sale page, but I have far too many other books to check out before I subject myself to more Just get on with it! reading.

Colour me disappointed.

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