Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fantasy as history, 23 Jul 2008
From the first sentence it is clear that this author knows his craft; plot, character and culture are blended expertly. Acacia is an epic-scale story, focusing on an established utopian empire seemingly in the midst of peaceful times, although something rotten lurks beneath its surface.
The strength of this book is the worldbuilding. Extreme attention is given to the detail, creating a believable world with a depth of history, myth and belief-systems. Various cultures are clearly defined, with the centre of the empire resembling a Mediteranean-like realm, ruling over other cultures that range from the wastelands of the frozen north to deserts in the south, and all of the shades inbetween.
There are no "good" or "bad" guys in this tale, only differences in perspective; I found myself leaning towards one side, only to have the author cleverly make you question their motives and values. This is a strength of the book.
The agressors in the obligatory conflict, the Mein, are a race of people that have been banished to the frozen north for many generations, where they harbour and cultivate some serious grudges (not unlike the Black Road in Ruckley's Goddless World series).
The political intrigue is on a grand scale, enough to rival Shakespeare; in fact the book is very reminiscent of a Shakesperean tradgedy as it unfolds.
Attention is also given to character, with a number of key players, as well as clearly thought through peripheral players. This is not quite so strong as the cultural/worldbuilding side though, and characters can sometimes dip into cliche and feel a little flat. As other authors have found, though, such as Tad William's in his latest offering, Shadowmarch, royal siblings are hard to write with any real empathy. It doesn't help that the author does not have a flair for dialogue (so noticeable in other newcommers such as Abercrombie and Campbell), and there is little humour, other than a smattering between a servile, scheming 'administrator' and a warlike race of savages, the Numrek, which at moments put a smile on my face.
The battle-scenes, strangely, feel a little underwhelming.
Also, the end seems to wrap things up so well, almost wiping out one side of the conflict, with the future left as a vague threat from another realm that we have not yet actually met;, in saying that, though, there is enough there to give you that 'look behind you' feeling, leaving me keen for the next installment.
I liked the moral questions asked, setting up a conflict between moral, idealistic principles and real life fraught with compromise and negotiation; this i felt was written engagingly.
Overall this is a solid fantasy debut, and whilst not quite entering the league of Martin, Abercrombie, Williams, Ruckley and Jones it shows definite potential, the positives far outweighing the negatives.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good fun and epic adventure, 16 Oct 2008
Having read David's Pride of Carthage I was quite looking forward to see what he would do with a fantasy setting. The book as you'd come to expect with David's work is well written, the characters crisp, the writing beautifully descriptive with a world full of shades of grey where no one is good or evil. It plays on all the best aspects from the fantasy world with political double dealing presenting readers with a fantasy nearly on the same epic scale as Steven Eriksons Malazan world. The one problem though, is the battle sequences, they don't seem to be fully realised in much the way that the rest of the book is as if bits and pieces have been taken out either as too fantastical or to keep the flow of things running for those not familiar with the type of battles presented within. It's a shame that it went this way as had a little more time been spent on that it would have made this a much better book. Still with around 600 pages, it's a good first effort in a fantasy world and will hopefully make readers sit up and pay attention to his work. Throw into the mix a story that leaves you with more questions than answers and a tangible threat for a following novel and I think that DAD has found a niche that will bring him fans the world over.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Complex fantasy in an intriguing world, 27 May 2009
Acacia is a novel which is epic in the broadest sense of the word, concerning the shattering and building of empires, across a large scale of time, and centred around a relatively small key cast of characters.
It is in this first area that Acacia does best. The world which David Durham has created is intricate, fascinating, and lovingly presented. The gradual revelation of each area of that world is handled well, and the reader is left breathless from the sense of grandeur and scope, and impressed by the background which interweaves each of the disparate cultures that are presented.
The book is written across a large piece of internal time; that time is not all present in the novel. The characters we will follow are introduced in the first half of the novel, and their fates left undecided - the reader is then re-introduced to those characters some years later. I enjoyed the abrupt nature of this change, exploring what were familiar characters, and reorienting my expectations from the character's actions, and the hints of their `missing time' gleaned from their interactions with others. On the other hand, some people may find this sudden jump in continuity more jarring than refreshing.
The characters are at once the greatest strength and weakness of the text. Each character within a faction has their own motives, and, as mentioned in other reviews, each faction of characters has their own point of view - Durham allows the reader to feel sympathy for one set of characters, and then swings to another viewpoint, and establishes your sympathy with those (often adversarial) characters instead. While some characters are less ethical than others, each has a valid point of view, and Durham tries hard to get us to understand it.
This `shades of grey' characterisation is one of the strengths of the book. Unfortunately, it feels as if the individual characters (as opposed to the factions, or groups of characters) are a little shallow. While some have their motives expressed in detail, others seem to remain question marks throughout the book. Perhaps that will change in later novels, but it is sometimes difficult to empathise with a character about whom we are shown or told a great deal, but not given much access to their personal motivations.
Having said that, the key characters are well written and represented, and while they may seem to play second fiddle to the world around them, that world is so rich that it may not matter. Throw in a plot which is reasonably deep and complex, with a few sharp twists and turns to throw off standard fantasy tropes, and this is an excellent novel. Highly recommended.
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by Paul Kearney
by Chris Evans
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
by David Anthony Durham
