Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
3 stars for wrapping things up, 0 stars for effort., 3 April 2008
I hate having to do this with an author who was once my favourite but here comes another poor review.....
I guess I shouldn't have been overly surprised given his recent efforts (for my main gripes, see my review of King Of Foxes) but like many loyal readers, I simply wanted to know what happens to a number of characters and worlds about whom I care greatly. I've felt that he has been rushing his books for too long, probably spending six months every year putting his feet up (and why not, he's earned the right to do so) but then spending the remaining six hastily putting together as many pages as he can muster in a short space of time in order to meet his publishers' demand that he put out a book roughly every twelve months.
The last book, Into A Dark Realm, ended so abruptly that I thought maybe Feist had died before he finished writing it. This latest offering literally picks up where the last one left off without any recap whatsoever, almost as though he threw what he had written at the publisher in order to meet their deadline and then carried on writing, so as a standalone book it would make almost no sense to a reader who hadn't read the last couple of books. Other reviewers have mentioned the factual mistakes so I won't go into these apart from to say that it simply isn't good enough. Equally, the number of typos in the book is disgraceful; HarperVoyager should hang their heads in shame.
I understand that Feist has started work on his next series and I pray that he will be allowed time to do them justice. I really don't care if I have to wait five years for the first book if that means it could present some value for money. I've just got my wife to start reading Magician and I could have cried when I picked it up again and realised that you could probably have fitted two to three of the pages from Wrath into one page of Magician, yet Magician is over twice as long. I really have felt ripped off by the last few books as, frankly, the whole of the Darkwar saga could have been presented as one, reasonably good value, book.
I suppose I should finish by saying whether I would recommend the book itself. If you're an avid Feist reader then you will have no choice but to read it as, like me, you will want to discover the latest episode in the lives of characters that have been around for over two decades. You'll probably agree that events in the book that would have previously been dealt with in epic proportions are now given little more than lip-service but I suppose it's better than nothing at all. However, even at Amazon's discounted price, I implore you to wait for the paperback version or get down to your local library. If you have never read a Feist book before, or haven't read the other Darkwar books, avoid this at all costs. If you fall into the former category, do yourself a favour and buy Magician - my wife hasn't been able to put it down and she isn't even a fan of the genre.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not Feist's best work, but if you're a fan still worth reading., 2 Sep 2008
This is the last book in Feist's the Darkwar trilogy, now for a bit of the story.
In this novel we see the evil and blood thirsty Dastai gain a foothold in the world of Kelewan, the Tsurani warriors do there all to fight agianst the death magic of the Dastai mages and the brutality of there warriors, on there side though they have some of the great military leaders of Midkemia, Eric Von Darkmoor, the former Duke Kasper and from the far land of of Novindus the general Alenburga to fight and lead the warriors, but will that be enough? On the Dastai home world we see Pug and his followers battle the evil Dread Lord and his minions with the aid of the white, a political and military group of Dastai who strive for the good of their people, but will they all make it out of the battle alive?
This is a good book, it's no where near as good as his previous work but it is still worth reading, the one point the irked me was in the book we see Feist tell that Eric Von Darkmoor served all his like with the Kingdom and was never married or had children, when any fan of Erik's knows his was married to Kitty in the Serpent war saga, this mistake is unforgivable when you consider Erik is one of the main characters in Fiest's work, hence the reason for three stars and not four.
I hope this review was of some help to you.
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
An exercise in cynical publishing, 24 Sep 2008
This volume has never been proof-read by anything or anyone with a level
of consciousness above that of an amoeba; at best it was processed through an automated grammar and spell checker; it's full of typographic errors, it's full of incorrectly utilised words, it has missing words, it has repeated words, it has .... the list goes on.
Worst of all these errors are persistent and frequent. It's a rare page that doesn't have one error or another, many have several.
One expects and allows for the odd mistake or typo, but this is at the
level which - if one is in the least bit sensible of language -
utterly destroys the enjoyment and readability of the work.
Frankly, I'm exceptionally disappointed in Harper Collins, and I'd expect Mr Feist to be equally disappointed and angry. One wonders if the US editions of the work suffer in the same manner.
Don't buy this unless you're extremely patient and even-tempered.
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