Because Seven Ate Reviews
Hey,
So I just finished up Seven Princes by John R. Fultz. It's the first book in an ongoing series, but the book is pretty self-contained and I get the feeling that subsequent books will be in subsequent generations rather than picking up where they left off.
It's pretty standard stuff -- peaceful kingdoms are just hanging out being cool when evil wizards show up and start conquering everything in sight. The royal princes (and yeah, there are seven of them), plus one princess rush around trying to recruit allies and rally armies and then there's a big fight, good wins, the end.
I think there's a lot of interesting world-building stuff going on here. In particular, the Elder Race that's carved out a space for humans are giants not dwarves or elves and they appear to be the only major non-human race (oh, and there are mer-folk). The magic comes in several flavors and doesn't paint itself into too much of a corner. Characters are a little one-note, but the shifting viewpoints keeps that under control. The story really clips along and (as I mentioned) basically ends in one sitting.
Drawbacks? Just two. First, the good King of the North has three sons. The eldest is a pale, gloomy, goth-y, wastrel, the two younger sons are popular, good-natured and super-strong. Guess which one is evil. Guess which one is secretly not the King's son and almost certainly the product of rape. Yeah.
Now part of this is something inherit in a lot of fantasy -- characters are a product of nature not nurture. A hero is often a prince or king or aristocrat of some kind. When the stable boy saves the kingdom, more often than not he's really the prince but didn't know it. Harry Potter isn't just the kid of some muggles. Luke Skywalker isn't just a farm boy. People in fantasy have destinies. And just as some people are bound to be heroes, there's often a variant where villains are bound to be villains. The rather black and white morality of a lot of fantasy doesn't help this.
I'd be really happy to read a story where the bastard son was an ok guy -- and that didn't automatically make the legitimate son a jerk. But you don't get that here and it's telegraphed so hard, you really wonder why no one notices what's going on.
The other part is that the evil wizards are really powerful. So powerful that only other wizards or semi-divine beings have a chance of taking them on. Which means that all the faffing about by the princes to raise an alliance to take on the wizards is really just a sideshow to the princess learning how to be a kick-ass wizard and rounding up some wizard buddies to take on the bad guys.
The non-wizards aren't totally ineffectual, but their contributions are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. It'd be like Frodo and Sam leading the armies of men while Gandalf popped round Mordor and chucked the ring in.
Despite all of this, the book is a fun read and for a debut novel it's put together pretty well. Not the greatest fantasy I ever read, but some decent journeyman work that would make for good beach reading.
later
Tom
So I just finished up Seven Princes by John R. Fultz. It's the first book in an ongoing series, but the book is pretty self-contained and I get the feeling that subsequent books will be in subsequent generations rather than picking up where they left off.
It's pretty standard stuff -- peaceful kingdoms are just hanging out being cool when evil wizards show up and start conquering everything in sight. The royal princes (and yeah, there are seven of them), plus one princess rush around trying to recruit allies and rally armies and then there's a big fight, good wins, the end.
I think there's a lot of interesting world-building stuff going on here. In particular, the Elder Race that's carved out a space for humans are giants not dwarves or elves and they appear to be the only major non-human race (oh, and there are mer-folk). The magic comes in several flavors and doesn't paint itself into too much of a corner. Characters are a little one-note, but the shifting viewpoints keeps that under control. The story really clips along and (as I mentioned) basically ends in one sitting.
Drawbacks? Just two. First, the good King of the North has three sons. The eldest is a pale, gloomy, goth-y, wastrel, the two younger sons are popular, good-natured and super-strong. Guess which one is evil. Guess which one is secretly not the King's son and almost certainly the product of rape. Yeah.
Now part of this is something inherit in a lot of fantasy -- characters are a product of nature not nurture. A hero is often a prince or king or aristocrat of some kind. When the stable boy saves the kingdom, more often than not he's really the prince but didn't know it. Harry Potter isn't just the kid of some muggles. Luke Skywalker isn't just a farm boy. People in fantasy have destinies. And just as some people are bound to be heroes, there's often a variant where villains are bound to be villains. The rather black and white morality of a lot of fantasy doesn't help this.
I'd be really happy to read a story where the bastard son was an ok guy -- and that didn't automatically make the legitimate son a jerk. But you don't get that here and it's telegraphed so hard, you really wonder why no one notices what's going on.
The other part is that the evil wizards are really powerful. So powerful that only other wizards or semi-divine beings have a chance of taking them on. Which means that all the faffing about by the princes to raise an alliance to take on the wizards is really just a sideshow to the princess learning how to be a kick-ass wizard and rounding up some wizard buddies to take on the bad guys.
The non-wizards aren't totally ineffectual, but their contributions are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. It'd be like Frodo and Sam leading the armies of men while Gandalf popped round Mordor and chucked the ring in.
Despite all of this, the book is a fun read and for a debut novel it's put together pretty well. Not the greatest fantasy I ever read, but some decent journeyman work that would make for good beach reading.
later
Tom