The Fifth Sorceress (Chronicles of Blood & Stone 1) [Paperback]

Newcomb has created his own unique world, with characters that I found to be highly believable, characters that are "flawed" as the now popular saying goes, but are still heroic. Through all of this Newcomb creates a feel, an atmosphere to his work which is very "Goodkindian", while still being unique unto himself.

Some of the negative reviews around the Net are preposterous, of course the book has a few rough edges, after all it is the first novel that Robert Newcomb has ever written, but his writing improves with every chapter, which is also very similar to Goodkind. As far as some of the other comments go about being sexist and what not, all Robert Newcomb has done is reverse the tables, instead of the "Dark Lord" we have the "Dark Sorceresses", instead of evil men pillaging and raping, we have evil women doing it.

According to some of the reviewers here it seems ok when men are evil and participate in despicable acts, but when women do it, and the author is a man, then the author and his world are sexist. To me, this adds uniqueness to Newcomb's world, and there are many times where he stresses that women are not evil, and that not even all Sorceresses are evil, just some of the most powerful ones in the world at this time.

As far as the violence within the book, there is certainly no more than you would find in a Jordan, Goodkind, or Martin book, and indeed if you do not like their works, or are too faint of heart for it, then you should not read Newcomb, after all, on the inside front cover, Del Rey compares him to Goodkind, and I find that Goodkind is far more descriptive of not only violence, but depravity as well.

Truthfully after only one book, I appreciate Newcomb more than I do Goodkind. I get the same feel out of Newcomb, yet he writes with more control than does Goodkind. It is obvious from the beginning that Newcomb has a plan for his series, and is well aware of where it is going, whereas Goodkind, by his own admission writes as he goes along with little pre-planning. Over time I think that Newcomb and The Chronicles of Blood and Stone as his series is called, will rise to grander heights than that of Goodkind's Sword of Truth. I finished The Fifth Sorceress in two days, and as soon as I finished the final sentence, I was impatient for the next book in the series. I can only hope that it will come quickly enough.

The premise goes that 300 years ago the wizards (who are good) narrowly defeated the sorceresses (who are bad) in a war. But instead of executing them, the wizards took them out into the ocean, from where nobody has ever returned if they sailed out for more than 15 days, and left them to die. Naturally the sorceresses survived and spent the 300 year gap plotting revenge and breeding themselves a race of winged demons.

Then enter Prince Tristan, who behaves like a stroppy teenager despite being just days from his 30th birthday. On his birthday the King will abdicate and he will become King. But guess what - he doesn't want to be King. He'd rather spend his time throwing knives into trees. And then we have Wigg, the great Wizard who should have executed the sorceresses 300 years ago but didn't because the wizarding order doesn't condone murder. He has his suspicions that the sorceresses might be about to make a come back, but instead of sending the royal family into the hills to hide, he allows the "abdication ceremony" to go ahead, and, surprise surprise, the sorceresses and their winged minions turn up and wreak death and destruction on all but poor Tristan and the inept Wigg, who manage to escape, and Tristan's sister, who is captured. At this point, instead of packing up and heading for the hills, Wigg decides to give Tristan a history lesson and explains in a very long-winded and boring way how magic works and how the sorceresses were defeated in the war.

Around about here I gave up on the book. Despite being quite violent, it was not engrossing. There was far too little action and far too much dialogue. And every time Wigg raised his "infamous eyebrow" I just wanted to cringe. I find comparisions between this rubbish and the works of George Martin and Terry Goodkind to be insulting. If you don't belive me then have a look at some of the reviews on the American Amazon site. Or you could try reading the book, but I really wouldn't bother.

I really wanted to like this book, and I really wanted to like the characters, but it's difficult to build up any enthusiasm when you get the over-riding feeling that the main plot was sketched out and then the detail was never filled in. The magic system was never explained adequately - for certain powerful spells rituals have to be performed and beams of light come from the sky, and yet for a sorceress to float about the room and make magical cages appear takes no effort whatsoever. Why? How are they doing it?

The book reminded me of children playing "I'm an evil sorceress and I'm attacking you with a lightning bolt"..."well I'm using my anti-lightning bolt cloak that I've just found behind this tree to protect myself" - okay it's not literally like that but pretty close upon occasion.

To add to it all there then seemed to be some printing areas, with paragraphs from later chapters appearing in the middle of earlier chapters.

Get this book from the library and if you like it then by it. I persevered to the end and then threw it in the bin straight away.