Back from Hamburg

I love my friends, especially when they don't mind me crashing on their sofa because it means they can use it as an excuse to invite their friends over for games night. (I also wasn't the only person travelling in from abroad ;) )

They have an adorable small person who is practically perfect in every way (I may be biased).

I am very happy :)

Book Review - Die Magier - Gefährten Des Lichts by Pierre Grimbert

This is the French book I read in the German translation. Which turned out to be middle-high fantasy (no elves [yet], some magic and special powers, lots of sword-fighting).

Middle-high fantasy and I have a mixed record. I prefer it to high fantasy, but I find that it sometimes falls pray to many similar cliches as high fantasy.

This one did. The occasional urge to yell "you're not Tolkein," definitely occurred. Which is a shame because the book was a lot better when Grimbert did his own thing rather than a third-rate Tolkein impersonation.

One detail I did like was the response of one male character from the Matriarchat of Kaul to another male character giving a woman orders. It was very "who do you think you are?!"

I didn't feel that the story was deliberately dragged out (although the reveal of part of the secret of the island definitely was), but it's definitely part of the 'part 1 of X' fantasy tradition.

The thing is, I want to know about what happened to the characters that hasn't been folded back into the main plot (yet). So I think its been successful in that aspect, if slightly frustrating in the plot development part.

The book starts with three questions. Precisely 1/2 of one of the questions has been answered.

( Spoilery Details )

One other question was introduced and answered.

( More spoilers )

And one new question has been set, which I suspect will be part of the plot for the remaining books ( Further spoilers )

The characters do suffer from a certain genericness, especially at the beginning, but they grow into more interesting characters along the way, which I think is all that can be asked for.

I'm very tempted to hunt on Amazon.de for the next one.

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One thing that did intrigue me is that in a lot of middle-and-high fantasy written by British authors, the world looks like the weather map done by the BBC, while this, written by a French author, looks like the weather map done by TV5.

One of the reviews of this that I read said the prose was stilted in the English translation, but they were giving the author the benefit of the doubt. Having read a different translation, I'm starting to think the author doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. Then again, at least for the title, I'm not sure I would have used the title they did use for the English translation, so it could be a bigger translation problem with the English version.

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( Librarything Suggestions )

They all appear to various flavours of fantasy novel.