Servusamanu.com

I finished Michael Stackpole’s Age of Discovery series about a month ago.  Predictably enough it got lost in the shuffle.  I’ve started to edit my novel (le sigh!) so I haven’t had much time to skim my notes.

I’ve been fairly liberal in my mentions and praise of Mr. Stackpole of the last few months.  His series on writing. “The Secrets” has been interesting, helpful, and inspiring.  I felt a near obligation to read a few of his books since I was tossing his name around so cavalierly without having read anything of his since the Rogue Squadron Star Wars series a decade ago.

I do not have much of a review prepared and I’m working off of memories that are already starting to fade.  Age of Discovery is trilogy.  (A Secret Atlas, Cartomancy, A New World)  The series was entertaining by most reasonable measures, but for whatever reason I did not find them as compelling as others I have read in the last few months.  As the last books on the list, I may have suffered from book fatigue, or perhaps I’ve grown out of his writing, or maybe I’ve simply moved away from fantasy in my interests.  I still read George RR Martin and await his next book eagerly, so I haven’t left it completely behind, but in this series the spark of magic held less of an interest for me than in the past.

I found many of the characters a bit too ‘in the know’.  Their indecisiveness and hesitation when faced with titanic revelations came across as overly quick and flippant.  They managed to adjust themselves to the consequences of the world within a chapter or two.  I admit there were long stretches of the book that were pretty fascinating, but the catharsis of seeing the character’s resolve their struggles was just too quick for tastes.

I’d be remiss if I gave a bad review.  They do not deserve that, per se, certainly not for me.  Age of Discovery is nothing if not a creative adventure.  Had the books been shorter I’d call it an amusing jaunt, but at 600 pages each in my edition they started to become a slog.  Again, 1800 pages does tend to bring on a bit of fatigue.

Unfortunately I don’t have any books new books on the horizon for a bit.  Editing is my highest priority.  I do, however, have an upcoming review of T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom on the list.  I’ll probably manage to get that down later in the week.