- Hardcover: 452 pages
- Publisher: Orbit (20 Jan 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841491918
- ISBN-13: 978-1841491912
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.4 x 4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 842,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Praise for THE ISLE OF BATTLE: 'Magic and mystery blend in abundance with an intricate cast of characters. An engrossing read.' ROBIN HOBB Praise for THE ONE KINGDOM: 'A master of intelligent fantasy - subtle, well-crafted and gripping.' STEPHEN DONALDSON
Product Description
A century of enmity has ravaged the one kingdom, as the mighty families of the Renne and the Wills have fought for their right to the crown. But now the decades of bloodshed have roused the unquiet river spirits from a timeless sleep, reviving a feud more deadly than any conflict of man. Alliances shift and loyalties are tested in the harsh civil war between the two great families, but a larger threat emerges. For the dark knight Hafydd has made a sinister alliance, leading him to eons old secrets, secrets that should remain hidden lest they destroy all lives they touch. Woken by the wars of man and nagar, even Death himself is preparing to leave his fell kingdom. And if the door to his domain cannot be shut, the feud between men and even the ancient wars of the nagar will be less than nothing besides the Armageddon that awaits.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
.....And he blows it at the finish line!,
By marktfo "marktfo" (Germany) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shadow Road (Swans' War) (Hardcover)
A bit of a tragedy; and I don't mean the story but this very disappointing 3rd & last volume of the Swan's War series.After reading the first two books I held out hopes that I had found another author to add to my list of "must buy their stuff" but now I wished I had waited for the paperback version. Russell has either rushed through this one to get on with something else or the book has been edited to death, I can't tell which. The patient build up of the previous volumes is missing here; you have the feel the story is constantly being pushed right up until the disappointing ending. On the ending, Russell should have read a few "David Gemmell's" to get an idea of how to finish a book with some style. The story becomes totally disjointed as the author tries to force a conclusion on ever thread of the tale he so carefully weaved in the previous books and the flow of story therefore is lost. I made sure I read the previous book again before starting this one and was unable to match the two up. It's very sad as a reader to see this happen to a story you high hopes for. Maybe a fourth book would have a better plan than this rushed mess. Hardened fantasy readers will of course want to buy this one to see how it ends, take my advice and wait for the paperback version.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Bad. Very, very bad.,
This review is from: Shadow Road (Swans' War) (Hardcover)
This is the worst fantasy novel I have read for a very long time. Sean Russell seems to have found a list of all the things an author is not supposed to do, and put them all together in this book.I was not overly impressed with the earlier installments in this series, but the quality of a couple of scenes and set pieces (eg the masked ball at the end of book 1) kept me reading, and being a completist I had to read this to finish off the series. I shouldn't have bothered. Russell's characters are overwhelmingly one-dimensional, more so than I recall them being in the previous books. One never gets any sense of what is driving the characters -- almost all of the good guys seem to be doing what they're doing just because they're good guys. Noble perhaps, but boring. There are not even any differences of opinion on how to achieve things. Instead, the "company" is more or less treated as one big (and not terribly interesting) character. Russell's idea of edgy, ambiguous characters seems to be confined to those who have made mistakes in the past but have a heart of gold nonetheless, and who now, having seen the error of their ways, are in no danger of ever doing anything bad again. Yawn. The setting is also poorly-defined. After three books, I have no understanding of the culture or beliefs of this place. It seems to exist more or less in a vacuum. The two competing families (Renne and Wills) have little to distinguish them from each other, and there is little reason for the reader to care which side wins, or whether they'll just end up destroying each other. Similarly, one is given little or no sense of the geography of the place. As readers of the series will know, the central concept is a world where magical "shortcuts" exist between locations, and secret paths into hidden realms can be found by those who know where to look. It's a great idea, but Russell just can't pull it off. For a shortcut to have any meaning, the reader must understand the normal distances between places, and this is something that Russell utterly fails to convey. There is no map, presumably a deliberate choice that's intended to avoid confusion about how the magical river can lead to so many different places. Unfortunately, the reader is left with no understanding of the world beyond a kind of amorphous blob. Journeys take exactly as long as it is convenient for them to take. I found it extremely jarring when the main group of characters, after a long, drawn-out journey to a place seemingly at the edge of the known world, suddenly find themselves a chapter later to be only a day's journey away from a secondary group of characters, who had been going in a completely different direction. On top of all this, the writing is poor and often laughable. The primary rule for any writer of fiction is surely to show and not tell. Russell repeatedly tells without showing, making it almost impossible to care about his already shallow characters. The dialogue too is bad and occasionally atrocious -- there were stretches where I found myself stopping on every second page in disbelief to re-read some terribly forced and unnatural piece of dialogue. In short, this book is a useful case study for aspiring writers to see how not to write. For everyone else, my advice is simple: don't bother.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprised at the negative reveiws!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Shadow Road (Swans' War) (Paperback)
Rather surprised at the low rating this book has been given. The reveiws on here almost stopped me buying this book but I'm glad I did. I enjoyed it tremendously and raced through it. It's not without it's faults though; it could have done with being at least half as long again in order to do justice to all the characters and storylines. The editing was also rather sloppy with at least two errors in continuity that annoyed me. However these are small gripes really and do not detract greatly from an excellent fantasy novel.Overall - Exciting, mysterious, fastpaced and moving.
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