Jonathan
Shannara is such a weird guilty pleasure type read for me. There are so many other series waiting on my shelf that may be newer, more unique, innovative, progressive, more classic or important. These books may be derivative, tropey, and simple, but they scratch a certain itch when I want to drop into a classic fantasy world with elves, sorcery, gnomes, trolls, druids, creatures, quests, and magic swords. I call it my Popcorn Fantasy.
After giving this book some time to settle and also speaking with 2 other people at length about this book, there is just too long of a list of issues and examples of bad writing/bad characters for me to give this anything higher than 2 stars. It was enjoyable enough while reading, but afterwards it just does not hold up.
My friend Jake's experience with this book is a great example of the experience of this book. While he was in the process of reading it, he excitedly told me all about this dragon rider romantasy book, how totally hooked on it he was, and how it caught him off guard. He told me that before he even finished the book, he had already pre-ordered book two. Months and months later I ask him if he ever got book two and read it. He said no, and when I asked again about Fourth Wing he says that he enjoyed it a lot but “It's honestly a steaming pile of shit”.
I aaaaaalmost gave this 2 stars, but couldn't quite decide, and the ending was solid enough to push it up to 3.
The writing quality in this just feels like a step down from the previous books. This isn't a tangible thing but it felt to me like it had lost a lot of the charm of the previous books, too.
The plot felt so much less focused, more meandering, with some vague threats about where the end of the book might go, but nothing super clear. For a lot of the book I wasn't sure where it was going.
The use of the word “fuck” in this book is hilarious and bad to me. This is largely just because this wasn't the case in previous books, so in this it just sticks out. It feels a lot like when a middle schooler learns how to swear, and so they just start inserting the swear word into every other sentence.
The biggest problem though was the smut. The gratuitous nature of it as well as the overly descriptive nature of these scenes. Again, it feels this way largely because it is such a departure from the way previous books did it. In previous books, the smut scenes were fewer and more spread out, so they felt more impactful and important. They typically happened with an important point in the plot, with some exceptions like Rhys sexting in book 2.... But in this book, it is so frequent and often at completely unnecessary points. After the first third of the book, which was smut-free, the smut shows up and ruins the pacing. Every time the plot would start to gain some momentum, and I would finally feel like the story is moving forward, BOOM overly descriptive smut scene that just completely destroys what forward motion we had. I really don't think a graphic detail of the way something drips down someone's thighs will push the story forward.
With these downward changes in writing quality, I was left with a book that had some decent plot and characters (although not as much as previous books), but was tarnished by these things that just pulled me out of my immersion of the story too frequently.
P.S. the funniest part was when a death god tried to convince your protagonist to join them, in part by vividly showing them how good their sex would be..... what?
I feel a genuine guilt for.... enjoying? This so much. Enjoying definitely isn't the right word. But I was so totally enthralled and captivated by Bateman as a character and the way that this is written, even if he is truly horrible.
This book definitely has some of the most graphic, gruesome, violent, horrible things I've ever read. I almost knocked it down to 4 stars because of the amount of this. The first several torture/murder/rape scenes feel, in some horrible way, like they are revealing more and more of Bateman's mind to the reader and have some kind of point, but after a certain point it just becomes horrific without a clear reason. The book could have done with 2 or 3 less of these scenes, and it would have been just as effective.
I impulse bought this at a book store on vacation when I knew i was banned from buying more books. I did so because of recommendations from friends of mine, but more so just to see if this book lives up to the hype and the ridiculously high average ratings here on Goodreads.
Yes. It does.
The scope, detail, and thoroughness of the worldbuilding here are incredible with all of the various peoples, cultures, lands, and spiritualities, but written in a way to teach you just enough while still making you want to extract more detail on the world through context.
Within the first 1,000 pages of the book, I was debating whether I'd give this 4 or 5 stars just because some parts did feel like they dragged on a bit too long, and I still might feel this way, but oh man –
The payoff, both in terms of plot and character building in the last 250 pages of the book, is so excellent and riveting that I can't give this book anything but 5 stars.
P.S. This book has some of the most effective use I've seen of occasional flashback chapters to reveal a character's back story.
2.5*
Sorry...
I am surprised by this rating, especially as I loved the 2nd book so much, but there were a lot of things in this book that just didn't land for me personally.
The entire first half of the book is POV chapters for an all new and all too-large cast of side characters, many of which (Baby Jenks, Jesse, The Talamasca) ended up being completely irrelevant and unnecessary for the overall story. Some of the others, such as Khayman, were relevant, but still unnecessary and just too long, and I generally didn't care much for any of these new characters. But seriously, why were Jesse or the Talamsca even in the book at all?
The entire first half of the book features no Akasha, and is only leading up to the point in time where the last book ended. Then, in the 2nd half, we finally get Akasha, but it doesn't entirely make sense. Her motivation is unclear for a large portion of the book, and then once it is explained, it is explained over and over through repetitive arguments with Lestat. Oh, and at one point Lestat caves under a small amount of peer pressure into killing a crowd of people on a whim. I thought this made no sense whatsoever for Lestat's character, and apparently Anne Rice agreed with me, because only a few pages later he is full of regret and questioning as to why he did that. (???)
Then in the final act, when all our side characters gather to save the day, they proceed to have over 100 pages of story telling together. I will admit that story is good, but the fact that these characters spent such a long time telling this fully detailed story to each other while the threat of Akasha looms closer and closer took me out of the immersion of the story. And then of course, the actual climax/solution to the issue comes very suddenly in just a few pages near the end of the book, and is rather anticlimactic considering all the buildup.
Oh well.
