50 in '10: #4
Feb. 4th, 2010 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Title: Brisingr
Author: Christopher Paolini
Length: 748 pages
So, part three of Christopher Paolini's fantasy-paint-by-numbers series. The book that made him change it from a "trilogy" to a "cycle." Let's just hope he doesn't pull a Piers Anthony. Overall, not horrible; his writing is improving with each subsequent novel. But he's still failing to adequately file off his serial numbers. One particular scene, in fact, I dubbed "Luke. Yoda. The Talk," it was such a blatant sourcing. The writing is generally uneven, Paolini fails to manage his secondary characters well, and you can tell which scene (swordsmithing) he really poured his heart into. He's also too methodical and intellectual of a writer: he has his characters list out every possible contingency like trying to write a genie's contract. Gotta cover all those possible loopholes! It also irks me that the title item doesn't appear until seventy pages from the end. Anther problem that I have with his writing is that his characters don't have personalities, they have character traits. A good author, like Lois McMaster Bujold or P.N. Elrod, you get the sense that even the secondary and tertiary characters walk off the page and continue going about their life. Paolini... you don't.
Verdict: I can't really recommend it, but if you're reading the eventually-to-be-a-quartet, no sense on stopping two books in.
Author: Christopher Paolini
Length: 748 pages
So, part three of Christopher Paolini's fantasy-paint-by-numbers series. The book that made him change it from a "trilogy" to a "cycle." Let's just hope he doesn't pull a Piers Anthony. Overall, not horrible; his writing is improving with each subsequent novel. But he's still failing to adequately file off his serial numbers. One particular scene, in fact, I dubbed "Luke. Yoda. The Talk," it was such a blatant sourcing. The writing is generally uneven, Paolini fails to manage his secondary characters well, and you can tell which scene (swordsmithing) he really poured his heart into. He's also too methodical and intellectual of a writer: he has his characters list out every possible contingency like trying to write a genie's contract. Gotta cover all those possible loopholes! It also irks me that the title item doesn't appear until seventy pages from the end. Anther problem that I have with his writing is that his characters don't have personalities, they have character traits. A good author, like Lois McMaster Bujold or P.N. Elrod, you get the sense that even the secondary and tertiary characters walk off the page and continue going about their life. Paolini... you don't.
Verdict: I can't really recommend it, but if you're reading the eventually-to-be-a-quartet, no sense on stopping two books in.
