Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Jedi on eagles, 24 May 2009
Decided to have a go at this, despite the really awful cover artwork (has an axe and the woman pictured anything at all to do with the contents of this book?) and was, at first, pleasantly surprised.
The opening i thought was great, well written, balancing character with world-building and a few plot-teasers, as well as an excellently written piece of misdirection.
Unfortunately, for me, it went a little downhill after this.
There was still plenty to enjoy. The characters i thought were well crafted and three-dimensional, human, flawed, likeable. There is clear cultural 'flavours' written into the tale, with probably the oriental touches, i thought, being written best. And also, I loved the eagles. They were certainly not represented as cuddly, fluffy friends, keeping a dangerous, feral edge, and the relationship between them and their 'Reeve' (a type of peacekeeper/jedi) was, i thought, very well written.
Also the plot was twisty-turny, intricate and interesting, with little carrots dropped regularly enough to keep me reading.
Unfortunately, for me, there were a few problems as well.
First of all, after the excellent opener i found it exceptionally slow. There was just so much character and plot development, I felt the story really got bogged down. I don't mind a slower paced tale, in fact those 'types' of fantasy are probably my favourite - i'm thinking Tad Williams, J. V. Jones here - but this just felt a little too much for me. I really felt that there was one P.O.V. too many.
Also the end battle, which was expertly built up, fell a little flat, being all over and done with in a few pages. It didn't help that some bizare dialogue was thrown into this, with two characters discussing really unrelated stuff, managing to suck most of the tension out of the scene.
So overall mixed feelings for me here; it was an enjoyable read, though a little disjointed and overlong for me, not living up to its excellent start or the 'big-hitters' in this style of traditional fantasy.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gripping and mysterious storyline, 26 May 2007
Kate Elliott has started a new series after finishing the "Crown of Stars" (7 volumes!). She tells the story of a world that is slowly coming apart. The reeves flying on great eagles try to uphold the law, but they are failing. For most of the book it is not at all clear if there is a driving force behind this descent into destruction and war. And it is only towards the end of Vol. 1 that one starts to get inkling what this mysterious cause might be.
Despite the fact that she introduces a number of main characters, she manages to maintain the momentum and the tension. You keep wanting to know what will happen next and keep getting surprised too.
I sincerely hope that Ms Elliott will not revert to her rambling style of the final volumes of "Crown of stars" and keep introducing new main characters each with their own story, completely loosing her focus on the central plot.
She's got off to an excellant start. But then so was the "The King's Dragon", the first vol. of "Crown of stars".
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6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A reasonable debut, but with some problems., 3 May 2008
Kate Elliott is the author of the highly successful Crown of Stars series. Crossroads is her new series, a seven-volume series which is divided into two trilogies with a linking book between them. Spirit Gate is the first book of the first trilogy (to be followed by Shadow Gate and Traitor's Gate).
For centuries the land of the Hundred was ruled by the Guardians, powerful beings to dispense justice, aided by their reeves, effectively a police force riding giant eagles. The Guardians have disappeared and are feared dead, but the reevers remain, overstretched and in increasingly few numbers as chaos and barbarism spreads across the land. Reeve Joss is given the difficult task of restoring order to an area in the south ravaged by bandit attacks, threatening trade between the Hundred and the Sirniakan Empire to the south-west.
Meanwhile, in lands far beyond the Hundred and the Empire, a Qin warrior named Anji marries a local woman, Mai, and finds himself and his troop of 200 soldiers drawn into danger and adventure, forcing them to flee their lands and journey into the Hundred, where they find the land on the brink of full-scale war.
Spirit Gate is a compelling story set in an interesting and well-realised world. Whilst Crown of Stars was deliberately set in a very rigid society highly reminiscent of medieval Europe, Crossroads is far more original and fantastical, although the two works share some character tropes and ideas. The book opens with a nice piece of misdirection that holds the attention and directs the reader into the story. However, the pacing is mismatched and key characters, most notably Joss, disappear for long stretches. In other places the timeline is a bit confused, with Elliott not being afraid to revisit the events of several chapters past from another POV, although once you get used to it this plot device does start yielding useful information. There is also a rather odd tendency for central characters to engage in frivolous discussions and banter in the middle of mortal danger, which defuses tension from the book, and after a very impressive build-up to a major confrontation at the end of the book, the actual final battle is resolved in perhaps two pages at best, which is very disappointing.
On the plus side, the relationship between the reeves and their eagles is well-defined. Those fearing that the giant eagles were going to be reduced to cuddly sidekicks can rest assured that these animals are depicted as the dangerous creatures they are. The idea that the reeves are policemen and not soldiers is also nicely done and leads to some interesting exploration of the roles of the police and the military in a fantasy world.
Unfortunately, the central threat in the book is left rather vauge and undefined. Is chaos and lawlessness returning in general because the Guardians are gone and some people are taking advantage of it, or is there a much darker master plan at work? Elliott hints at both possibilities but never really gives us enough information to come to a conclusion.
Spirit Gate (***) is an enjoyable and solid fantasy novel with some very nice ideas which doesn't entirely come together satisfyingly. Still, the novel leaves me intrigued to read the sequel, which I suppose is its main objective.
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