"The Far Kingdoms" is one of the most pretentious fantasy novels that I've ever read, by which I mean that the authors apparently think that they've written something that's deep and meaningful and will have a big effect on the lives of their readers. In reality, this novel is completely forgettable. The plot deals with Amalric Antero, a spoiled rich kid who becomes a spoiled rich adult and joins with a soldier, Janos Greycloak, in several voyages. They hope to find the legendary Far Kingdoms, a land of wealth and happiness that supposedly lies a long distance to the East. Antero is one of the least likeable characters that I've ever seen in a fantasy novel. His men die, and he has no emotional reaction at all. His wife and child die, and he only mourns for a couple hours before taking off on another trip. He seems to drift through the book without caring about what he's doing or what happens to other people. In the end, I found that I didn't care whether or not Antero and Janos ever reached The Far Kingdoms.
In addition, it seems that not much thought was put into the plotting and writing of this novel. The pace is very uneven. Sometimes the authors dwell for pages on minute details, while other times they skip over months of action in just a few sentences. The first fifty pages are totally irrelevant to the rest of the book; I think that they were written just to include some rather insipid sexual content. After that, the plot falls into and endlessly repeating pattern. The main characters travel somewhere, get into a desperate situation, get rescued miraculously, travel somewhere else, get into another desperate situation, get rescued again, etc... Many of the scenes border on the absurd, such as an encounter with apparently intelligent tigers and monkeys in the middle of the desert, and by the time that a thirty-foot-long ghost ferret showed up to eat the bad guys, I was ready to throw this book into the garbage can. In short, don't waste your time with this pile of nonsense. If you want a short fantasy novel that's both creative and well-written, try "The High House", by James Stoddard.
