A review by mlejoy
Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg

3.0

Sometimes maybe you should judge a book by it's cover - in this case it's He-Man in tights riding some sort of Dr. Suess looking horse-animal from the early 80s. This book started out interestingly enough, but anyone with a brain can figure out the entire plot in the first 100 pages. I kept reading thinking things would get better, but it just ended up being a 400 page book about people traveling with interminable descriptions about the local plants along the route. Meanwhile, every bad thing that could happen to the group does - and it just seems unrealistic and not dangerous at all - since you know no one is going to die or be injured (or if someone does die, it's a throw-away character). Literally nothing of consequence happens in the entire book until the very obvious ending. I thought everyone on that world must be so stupid since every person Valentine runs into immediately bows down to him, just because he SAID he was the king. Very silly. I was expecting a big pay off at the end when Valentine finally gets to the Castle Mount to reclaim his thrown, but all that happened in about 20 pages. This book just wasn't for me, I'm dumbfounded by all the great reviews.