sfgale

The first time I read this it annoyed me so much that I literally slammed it down on the table and snorted imperiously at it(and then gave it a 1 star rating), but for some reason I felt the need to try again and on the whole, am glad I did in the end. I still found the endless reviews with their endless gushing over it to be a little misleading though. It's not that it's a bad book but rather that I have a real dislike for this fairy-story kind of writing, you know, there's a king and an evil magician and a good magician and a young lad that's put-upon and outcast and ends up being the great saviour(if not the new king, almost!). When I invest time in a novel I really like it to show me something new. Having said that, I did enjoy it in the end although the characters still seemed a bit one-dimensional even as I reached the end. I will now read the next one which I really never expected to be saying, but I suppose I'd be asking for too much to hope that it'll be a little more gritty and a little less fairy-story. Still, there's always hope.

Not bad, just not as great as most of the reviews would have you believe.