Guardian Cycle by Julia Grey
I just finished the Guardian Cycle by Julia Grey, which is a series of about five books of medium length each. It's one of those series that I'm not entirely sure about. I think some parts of it were excellent, and some parts of it were awful, with very little in the middle, and even now I'm a bit unsure about which bit is which.
The series is very different from most because the lead character is a cripple, and he doesn't go around killing people. The whole plot rather tends to be driven by him talking to people and trying to convince them to do what he wants. If he fails, Very Bad Things happen and lots of people die. Equally, he tends not to be a decisive character, and never knows what to do or even why he's doing things at any moment. The approach is quite refreshing, but it does tend to be also really frustrating. The book also seems to be extremely character driven too, to the point that world building gets badly neglected. Although any location is well described, I had a complete lack of sense of place, and this did a lot to ruin parts of the books for me.
The magic system is also really confusing for me, because there doesn't seem to be one. In fact, the whole books have the feel of a no-magic fantasy land. The set-up actually starts with a very scientific astronomy system based around four moons, which is again interesting and refreshing. But then magic does crop up and it's never really described or made to make sense. It mostly tends to be about belief magic (believe something hard enough and it will come true), but then there's also psy gifts, weird water magic and one character can control the weather. The whole thing did tend to give a feeling of Deus Ex Machina to parts of the plot that magic gets involved in and I never knew when magic would come in and Make Everything Better.
I do have the strange feeling that someone who is not me, and has a different set of priorities in reading, would love this fantasy series. However, it utterly failed to do it for me.
The series is very different from most because the lead character is a cripple, and he doesn't go around killing people. The whole plot rather tends to be driven by him talking to people and trying to convince them to do what he wants. If he fails, Very Bad Things happen and lots of people die. Equally, he tends not to be a decisive character, and never knows what to do or even why he's doing things at any moment. The approach is quite refreshing, but it does tend to be also really frustrating. The book also seems to be extremely character driven too, to the point that world building gets badly neglected. Although any location is well described, I had a complete lack of sense of place, and this did a lot to ruin parts of the books for me.
The magic system is also really confusing for me, because there doesn't seem to be one. In fact, the whole books have the feel of a no-magic fantasy land. The set-up actually starts with a very scientific astronomy system based around four moons, which is again interesting and refreshing. But then magic does crop up and it's never really described or made to make sense. It mostly tends to be about belief magic (believe something hard enough and it will come true), but then there's also psy gifts, weird water magic and one character can control the weather. The whole thing did tend to give a feeling of Deus Ex Machina to parts of the plot that magic gets involved in and I never knew when magic would come in and Make Everything Better.
I do have the strange feeling that someone who is not me, and has a different set of priorities in reading, would love this fantasy series. However, it utterly failed to do it for me.