A couple of friends had fervently recommended Kushiel's Dart, the first book in a fantasy trilogy by Jacqueline Carey. I am not scared of long books, but at nine hundred pages even I found the prospect of reading it daunting. I started it, though, and when I was on page fifty or so and bored out of my mind, the guy who had recommended me the book said "Well, yes. It starts kind of slow, but once you get past the first 250 or 300 pages the pace picks up and it never slows down." Three hundred pages, if you ask me, is a lot of pages to get through before any story gets started. However, my friend was right… kind of.
The first 80 pages or so are boring and expository. The author is busy building her world, and she does this by drowning the reader in a sea of names, provinces, kings, queens, historical characters (historical in the reality of the book, that is), noble houses, royal families, and political intrigue. I love political intrigue, don't get me wrong, but it can be presented in a more dynamic and entertaining way, like Michael Stackpole does. Also, the deluge of information could have been more evenly distributed, each detail being brought up whenever it was relevant, instead of all at the beginning. As a result, by the time those plot threads came into play, I had forgotten who the characters where or why they were involved in this particular affair.
The story started to get a little more interesting from page 90 until page 250 or so, and then pages 300 to about 550 were really good. This is the part where Phèdre and Joscelin interact with the Skaldi, and it was hands down the best part of the story. I thought that at long last things were starting to happen, and I got all excited. However, the story went downhill from there, and the second half of the book felt very slow and repetitive, becoming a succession of travels and journeys to convince one lord or another to join the cause. (I know I'm being very vague, but you know I don't like to spoil anything in my reviews.) After a couple hundred pages of that, I was ready for the final battle, and the whole episode with the Master of the Straights that preceded it, I could have done without.
The final battle came, and it was followed by the longest epilogue ever, but at least it offered closure. Sure, there are two more books in the series, but the ending of this one (the author's debut novel) is closed enough that I don't feel the story is incomplete. As far as I'm concerned, the story is over, and whatever happens to the surviving characters in the following chapters of the saga is a different story. A story, I guarantee you, I will not be reading.
6 comments:
Creo que eres muy impaciente para leer, siempre quieres que los libros sean acción, por lo que cuentas el libro tiene un buen comienzo y el escritor quiere presentar su mundo y darle una buena base. Stapoleck combina muy bien la accion y la intriga politica y es muy directo en seguida estas metido en batallas etc, e intercala muy bien la trama politica, pero hay gente que prefiere separar las tramas
No necesito que los libros tengan acción desde el principio, pero empezar tu historia con 300 páginas de información cuya relevancia en muchos casos es más que discutible me parece una elección desafortunada. De hecho, la segunda mitad del libro es acción, y me aburrió soberanamente.
Pero esa dostos del principio son lo que le dan consistencia al mundo que ha creado, que no hace falta que haga una especie de silmarillon o como se escriba, pero a mi esas cosas me gustan.
Por cierto viendo la foto de la portada creia que era una novela de estas eroticas que tienen tanto exito entre las feminas, claro que faltaba el tipo tope cuadrado abrazando a la chica.
Vale que es importante darle consistencia al mundo que has creado, pero puede hacerse de otra forma. Por ejemplo, dando la información cuando es necesaria o relevante, distribuyéndola a lo largo de las páginas poco a poco, en vez de presentarla toda de un golpe al principio.
Y aunque no es una novela de las que dices (hahaha) la protagonista es una... hmmm... cortesana de lujo, con lo que sí existe el componente erótico, aunque es más S&M que otra cosa. Al menos, nunca se describe con mucho detalle, menos mal...
Estoy con Fel. En ficción, la mejor información es la que el lector recibe sin darse cuenta. Greg Keyes, sin ir más lejos, es un buen ejemplo de cómo hacer que el lector conozca cómo funciona el mundo ficticio en el que está inmerso sin apartarse de la historia en ningún momento.
Qué grande es Greg Keyes...
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