A review by sling
The Summer Dragon by Todd Lockwood
2.0
I probably wouldn’t have finished it but for my attempt to finish a book a day over the holidays.
It isn’t that the book didn’t have some merit but there were just too many things going on and a lot of it was tell, not show.
History, religion, politics, family squabbles, murder, portents, omens, curses, ancient cities, everything. There’s even a semi-distant empire that wants to ground outposts under its bootheel!
And I was left with so many questions. Here follow spoilers.
Why, if the settlement is at the forefront of a war, are there so few troops? (One of the things I couldn’t get the sense of was how large the land was - number of towns, villages, how distant things were, how densely or sparsely populated the land is, how big the capital city is.)
Why, if she’s always right, does everyone hate Maia? (Seriously, she should have just been named Mary Sue.)
Why, if actions have consequences, does no one really suffer from a bad decision? (The son gives away the farm - literally. Maia shoots someone in cold blood. Just two examples off the top of my head.)
When Darian runs away, why, if he’s been building up this plan for a while driven by his growing envy and resentment, do we only get two lines of dialogue explaining his feelings? (And a half-hearted paragraph that starts the scene.)
Why, if it’s so important to the book, the title, and the series name, do we only encounter Gertig once and the word Eventide twice? (Should have just named it “The Catalyst Hits in Chapter One.”)
Why were the refugees killed? (Surely there are better ways to show Addai is evil.)
And just generally, why does everyone just run away? (Maia three times, her brother, her father, Ghem)
To sum up, I have spent far too much time thinking about this book and I won’t be reading the next one, unless I’m stuck in Harare airport for 12 hours and it’s the only book available.
It isn’t that the book didn’t have some merit but there were just too many things going on and a lot of it was tell, not show.
History, religion, politics, family squabbles, murder, portents, omens, curses, ancient cities, everything. There’s even a semi-distant empire that wants to ground outposts under its bootheel!
And I was left with so many questions. Here follow spoilers.
Why, if the settlement is at the forefront of a war, are there so few troops? (One of the things I couldn’t get the sense of was how large the land was - number of towns, villages, how distant things were, how densely or sparsely populated the land is, how big the capital city is.)
Why, if she’s always right, does everyone hate Maia? (Seriously, she should have just been named Mary Sue.)
Why, if actions have consequences, does no one really suffer from a bad decision? (The son gives away the farm - literally. Maia shoots someone in cold blood. Just two examples off the top of my head.)
When Darian runs away, why, if he’s been building up this plan for a while driven by his growing envy and resentment, do we only get two lines of dialogue explaining his feelings? (And a half-hearted paragraph that starts the scene.)
Why, if it’s so important to the book, the title, and the series name, do we only encounter Gertig once and the word Eventide twice? (Should have just named it “The Catalyst Hits in Chapter One.”)
Why were the refugees killed? (Surely there are better ways to show Addai is evil.)
And just generally, why does everyone just run away? (Maia three times, her brother, her father, Ghem)
To sum up, I have spent far too much time thinking about this book and I won’t be reading the next one, unless I’m stuck in Harare airport for 12 hours and it’s the only book available.