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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Exciting but muddled, 3 Sep 2006
There are some very good points and some considerably less good points to note about G P Taylor's Tersias.
On the upside, it's a pretty thrilling, well plotted tale, with plenty of twists and turns. Switching between locations for each chapter creates a filmic effect, with lots of cliffhangers. The writing is vivid and intense, and the characters are well drawn. It's highly original and imaginative.
On the downside, rather like Shadowmancer, there are too many different baddies and monsters, and no clear sense of an ultimate uber-foe. None of the protagonists are particularly sympathetic (this may be a strength for some; it's not for me. I found them all quite repulsive, and rather hoped they would all die). It's good that he's working with "new" monsters, such as the Wretchkin, but a new mythos perhaps needs to be better established. There are too many different ghouls and spirits - the wolf, the Wretchkin(s?), random spirits, white wavering hand, far too many glowing red eyes and fangs and things creeping in and appearing and being remembered from childhood. Admittedly I tend to read things a bit too quickly, being impatient for the ending, but I got confused.
Having two protagonists whose names both start Mal- is not a great idea. It creates a strange sense of echo or confusion, at least in my head. "Magnus Malachi" is a superb name, but "Malpas" could easily have been changed to Valpas or something.
Then this one is a matter of taste, but many readers might find Taylor too graphic and too gruesome. I would be wary of buying this for more delicate little flowers, it's considerably stronger stuff than Harry Potter. The way Taylor recreates a sense of the grime and filth and violence and squalor of Old London is brilliant, but it also might make you feel rather sick.
I liked the sense of redemption that Malachi undergoes, albeit unbelievably rapidly. I wanted more on Tersias, he seemed to fade into obscurity towards the end. And I would have been quite happy for them to have fed Tara to the locusts.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I really was hoping this would click for me., 18 July 2007
G.P. Taylor's earliest books (Shadowmancer, Wormwood) were like craftily great. And the assurance was there, when i got this slice of his works. Unfortunately I was disapointted. Out of the many characters there was, only one really appealled to me, (whom was barely in the book at all) the rest were incredibly annoying. Either bratish kids, all power-crazed psychos. I had to withdraw from reading about 3/4 of the way through, as I didn't care who died or lived anymore. But there are some things to recommend: the clever verbal battles, the kidnappings of Tersias, the many double crossings and such. Many fans of Taylor will love this book, because they may adjust to the characters and the continuing dreary language. But this member of the fans didn't, although wouldn't pass off an opportunity of another Taylor book.
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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but left feeling dissastisfied, 1 Oct 2005
I found this book quite hard to get into, but once I did I was gripped and found it really compelling. Then I got bored of it again, then it gripped me again... Tersias has a very disparate style and the plot seems to follow no sort of sense or logic (even in fiction terms). The characters whilst quite vivid do not have any real depth and I didn't finish reading the book caring about any of them. The motivations of the book's "bad guys" were obscure and all in all I finished the book wondering quite what the point of it had been. There are however some great concepts within the book and parts of it had me enthralled, but then whatever was happening would just stop and I'd be left wondering what was going on (again) - the rest of the novel seemed to meander along aimlessly all the way to a very wet ending. Maybe this is part of an intended series and all will be revealed later, but it didn't feel like that and even if this were to be a serialised story I didn't feel that the unresolved issues or less explored concepts would really translate well into a sequel. Entertaining but lacking the fullness of a really great novel.
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