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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A word of warning to those new to Ian Irvine, 28 Mar 2003
By A Customer
Where to begin...Ian Irvine is a truly 'great' writer of Science Fiction. In my opinion there can be no doubt. He writes in a manner that adds realism to the unreal and all of his books are epic in the extreme. His first series was an inspiration to me, forcing me to rethink the genre itself from 'trashy Sci-Fi' (please note, I use this phrase with affection, I love all Sci-Fi) to GOOD fiction and more importantly: GOOD literature. With this new novel "Geomancer", he returns to the world of his original series. He takes an already ambitious plot and backdrop and increases those features tenfold. There is a price to this however. In his entirely admirable pursuit of realistic characters and general population he has strayed a little into adding what I would describe as 'mumbo jumbo' or technical jargon. For those comming to Geomancer after having read the first series you will have no problem at all adapting and accepting this characteristic of the book and I am certain you will LOVE the novel in all its glory (in which case, read my rating as 5 stars, I insist). However, newcomers I feel will be more than a little overwhelmed, this is very sad indeed because it may very well cause them to put down what is a VERY good book and the beginning of yet another series of genius. For this reason alone I used 4 rather than 5 stars. I hope my words do not cause a single person to have second thoughts. I consider myself an intelligent reader (I guess I would though wouldnt I?) and I drew alot of pleasure from the first series, likewise I believe most other readers will feel the same way. This novel is in my opinion not as openly clever as the first novel of the first series, however its sheer scope and imaginative grounding is breathtaking. If the author can continue the series without stumbling, it should make a more than worthy -though slightly different- successor to "The View from the Mirror".
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
even better than the last series, 24 Jan 2005
I was half expecting to be dissapointed with this book since the previous series finished so strongly. My worries were however completely unfounded, since within a few dozen pages I was captivated by new characters and social structure.
Having read this and some of the later books in the series I was really struck by how much Irvines story telling has improved. The Well of Echoes is, as a series, in general much better paced and constructed story than View from the Mirror (the early books in VFTM were quite hard work in places). Infact its paced to perfection - better than ANY fantasy book I've ever read (and Ive read quite a lot). This is the first time that I have read a book with parallel plot lines where I was not in the least bit frustrated when it swapped over since the interest and excitement of the story was so well balanced between them. Never once did I think "I've got read this chapter quick to get back to the other plot line". Its almost as it Irvine has learned some lessons from Lian the master story teller hero of the first series :-).In short this second series from Irvine is the best fantasy series since Fiests Rift War.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A review on the Tetralogy, 13 Sep 2007
Instead of writing a review for each book of the tetralogy, I'd like to write just one.
First of all, it's not what I expected given the names of the books. I was expecting a book in a highgly magical world, but this isn't, is set in a low magic world (so don't expect wizards blasting the skies, nor doing anything too flashy). There is magic, or I should better say various types of magic, but it tires its users a lot and can create just minor to moderate effect.
Secondly, these books form a continous story, and should be considered as one big story. In other words, the books are not independent from each other.
The story is about many characters, each of which interesting, with his human frailties and even making mistakes, some even inexperinced and selfish, but that slowly grow as human beings. In their own way they truly make the story more interesting and I actually cared to see what happened to almost each of them throughout the 4 books.
To the story then (in short). It's about a great war on an Island/Continent between Humanity and a race coming from the Void (called the Lyrinx) and now fully established on the continent. Each of them has powerful claws, wings and eat humans, althogh not all of them fly (those who do need magic to aid thier flight, and not all of them are capable of it).
Obviously the story involves characters learning about the world, about magic, about the enemy, the truth behind the war and how to find practical solutions to end it and have all sorts of mis-adventures, being hunted both by humanity's leaders and the enemy and it's quite well presented, with a non-obtrusive writing style with a very good flow, no excessivly long descriptions and loads of action.
My only critique is that he had separated too much his characters for the first two books and a half. The story would split into three threads, and sometimes as many as 100 pages went through before the story would go on with a character and a particular thread, just to be cut again and leaving you hanging, and making me lose interest. This, unforunately has been overdone in the second book, and it's bad because it ruins your immersion in things.
Luckily, the Author learned from his mistakes and he stopped doing this by the middle or so of the third book, making the third book very good, and the forth just excellent, bringing forth just one thread that makes you unable to keep the book down.
In conclusion, even if all books have an underlying great story/writing style:
Geomancer: Great start, but a little fractioned: 4 stars
Tetrarch: Good story, but ruined by excessive number of story-threads: 3 stars
Alchymist: Starts slow, but when all characters are all back together becomes really focused and incredibly good. At the end of the book there is one of the best scenes I have read about (that actually carries on on the forth book) 4 stars.
Chimaera: Ian Irvine's masterpiece. It had me go "wow" several times, and shows how the author has grown up as a writer. 5 stars
Now, I am really looking forward for his new tetralogy (but not the previous one).
I hope this review was useful.
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