Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What a start!, 25 April 2002
By A Customer
I'd placed my order for this novel before I read the review by buckelwal so you might understand my anxiety about having potentially wasting a few of my hard earned pounds. After a few pages, I knew I shouldn't have worried.Fair enough, some of the writing is a little rough at times but this book is a great read. For me, the cliches were deliberately played and used to perfection, leaving the reader comfortable with the world and able to enjoy a truly exciting story. The characters' banter is wonderful at times, really evoking old friends talking, the action is stunning and the plot, while it's not the most original, just drags you in because it's so tightly run. And The Raven? I know they're described as mercenaries but they are more like a special forces unit, going into places, sorting things out and getting the hell out again. If anything, this has taught me not to pay any attention to any reviews. If I had, I might have missed this. So I must give that advice to everyone. And that means ignore this review. So why did I write it? errr... Oh, just read the book and make your own mind up!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marmite, 13 April 2004
An impressive first novel that shows none of the uncertainty of style or plot fall-backs often see in a Fantasy debut. Barclay's breathlessly fast-pace, action-heavy style is not for everyone it seems, but once I got used to it I found the book to be well written and tightly plotted.I have to admit when I started reading the book I did wonder if the Raven (the mercinary group at the centre of this story) would be completely wiped out before I'd finished a third of the pages, seemingly central characters fall like leaves in the beginning of the novel. Once the casualty list settles down however the story really gets going and from then on it doesn't stop. The pace is unrelentingly intense, I felt honestly exhausted after finishing this book, so much so that although I was very keen on starting 'Noonshade' (the next in the first 'Raven' trilogy which ends with 'Nightchild' ) I decided on reading another book in-between just to let me relax! Barclay achieves a truly epic storytelling in a relatively slim book (if you are used to the door wedge sized behemoths that fantasy trilogies are usually comprised of) how he does this is part of why some don't like his work. Whereas many authors spend hundreds of pages setting-up their fantasy worlds and building up their characters, Barclay uses the standards of the genre to avoid repeating what others have written. He doesn't explain the existence of Elves - they're just there, the legendary reputation and skill of the Raven is not allowed to be built up before they suffer loss. The author seems to say, 'you've read this before, I'm not going to repeat it here', which wouldn't work for everyone but he certainly pulls it off. All this lets Barclay concentrate on what he's really interested in, the Raven and the plot. Don't be put off expecting graphic description of violence and bloodshed. Those things certainly have their place in the book, but they are not a central feature in the story. Barclay's style allows him to describe dramatic conflicts both on a large and small scale without either getting bogged down or shying away from the action, a skill which many genre writers might learn from. Some have accused this of being 'dumbed-down' fantasy, I would instead say it's a simply in a different style, and shows an excellent quality of writting within it. My own genre favourites are such as J.V.Jones, Guy Gaveriel Kay and Julliet Marillier and I'm comfortable in comparing this book to these fantastic novelists work. A greater recommendation, I can not give.
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lovably unpretentious, 28 Feb 2005
I like to read books that I think will change my life. At the end of the day, they're just books, so I generally return to normal quite quickly, except maybe with an increased desire to use 'whom' in the right context and semi-colons in the right place. But in that fashion I churn through Murakami and Orwell and Mervyn Peake, and hey, I love them- pretentious as my motives may be- and it's led me to all sorts of books that I wouldn't have picked up had I not been so, and I in turn loved them too- Ian M Banks, Raymond Carver, Bill Waterson. I think of myself as reasonably widely read. What leaves me at a loose end is fantasy. I mean, out-and-out pure fantasy- there's loads of it, but what's the point? Fantasy never overtly tries for relevancy (except with the obvious satires of Pratchett) settling instead for reccounting historic fables of a past we never had in some parralell universe, or whatever. I guess I was embarassed to approach a genre so determined to have no impact on the world, and more importantly, on me. I didn't feel like the effort was there. Fantasy is so formulaic- Demon Lord/ Dragon/two Demon Lords threaten humanity or some self-conciously multi-cultural society ('you can't have humans to captain ships, you must have a completely separate race of boat people!' Good one. [Disclaimer- this may never have happened in a fantasy novel, but it seems like it would]) and a group of people, possibly with some sort of Messiah-type killjoy in tow being all confused about his 'calling', have to save everything by doing stuff. And so I avoid the fantasy sections, save for a couple of sagas I've been lent by friends (and, true, enjoyed quite a bit, like the first few Wheel of Time books and Lord Of The Rings (LOTR, for the record: quite poo (WOT: sprawlingly arrogant, but quite cool in Shadar Logoth and stuff (brackets all the time: fantastic, and a sure sign of an intelligent reviewer, 'specially as he knows its called 'ellipses')))), but another potential pit-fall of the genre is that authors seem to want to justify the fact that they've spent a year coughing up hackneyed sword play by being *detailed* about it. And so we have economies and made up languages and local bi-elections. Y'know, I was really quite disparaged.
Anyways, to the point: another weakness of mine, aside from translated Japanese novels that want to change my entire outlook on the world are books with cool two-tone colours, i.e., black and something primary. Possibly with an author sharing my own forname. That's where the Chronicles of the Raven come in. They're formulaic, yeah, I'm not even going to try to deny that, but in the same way that Columbo is formulaic, no, bad example... in the same way that The Hives are formulaic, these books are also fantastically cool. Ignore the fact that they insist on using spells called 'FlameOrb' and 'IceWind,' this is rock'n'roll fantasy. So we get kick-ass mercenaries (with a leader called 'The Unknown Warrior,' which threw me a little at the start, but it becomes less and less of a problem) that are each genuinely different characters with quirks and mannerisms that are interesting to see develop. They have fall-outs and moments of camaraderie and everything within their group is so small scale and human that it's almost by accident that along the way they fill the role of 'saviour'-that Rand or Frodo ham up in those other books- without any of the mopeyness but instead sarcastic quips and one liners. I don't know what point I'm trying to make here. I should hate the Raven books (they're hard core fantasy, oi), but when the next fantasy main-stay lurches along I'm eager instead for the really cool way that James Barclay is going to kill it (tapping entire oceans onto the heads of the approaching enemy, anyone? Armies of dead-pan soldiers operating by remote control from where their souls are kept in stasis by little blue buggers, anyone?). Sorry. I think that's fantastic. . I'm not saying these are brainless, the studies of character within are flawless, and there's no flabby excess, just the satisfying feeling that you're reading something that fulfills exactly what the author set out to do, and I think anyone can enjoy that. These books radiate Barclay's love of spinning a yarn- not to the point of the forty novel sequences that R. Jordan likes to weave, or spew- but for the sake of diverting you, the reader, into a world free of consequence, but none the worse for that, just a bit more funAm I 'getting' fantasy? Maybe. The Raven books are desperate not to change my life. Instead, they're a snappily written companion for a little bit of the way. I'm disarmed by their easy-going manner and they've snuck under the radar. I've rambled for a while, and dammit, looking back, I'm an opinionated oik but to clarify: books that change your life= good. Books that seek not to, but are damn well written, well characterised and tightly plotted= also good. I can't exactly justify reading them in the face of the fact that there's more literature in the world than anyone could read in thirty life times, but I still think I'll read them again one day. The Raven books are an excellent author enjoying himself. And it rubs off. I'm converted. And the coloured spines looks so pretty on my book shelf.
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