Tuesday, September 30, 2008

[Mini-review] The Cloudmages Book 1: Holder of Lightning (S. L. Ferrell)

Erm. What to say about this book. I had kind of forgotten all about it until I saw it in the list of books I wanted to do a mini-review for. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad or anything… it was good, solid, welsh-influenced fantasy. It was at least marginally emotionally engaging, and in spite of being pretty thick it read quickly.

It just… wasn’t really anything new. Girl finds stone. Stone’s made of magic. There are lots of funny fantasy names. Girl faces adversity and meets up with a cast of supporting characters. Some of them are with her, some of them are against her, and there are (easy to call) inevitable betrayals. The whole thing was entertaining enough, it just also felt very “done.” I’ll admit that the ending surprised me a little in some aspects… but… yeah.

That said, I might go ahead and pick up the second book in the series if I’m bored. I’ve heard vague ruminations that the mediocre first book is a huge setup for some really stellar later work, so maybe we’ll see.

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