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A review by cupiscent
The Sword of Albion by Mark Chadbourn
2.0
James Bond versus the Fae in Elizabethan England. But I was really quite disappointed with the delivery. Our hero is sort of tedious, never really bogged down in his emotions, and often making phenomenally stupid decisions. There are long sequences of action that don't really carry emotive resonance (and they could, were Will Swyfte more deeply plumbed) and when he does wrestle with a moral dilemma he sort of comes across as weak. The writing is rather pedestrian, tending to clunky and repetitive sentences festooned with high-drama - and there were at least two glitches of the "nearly but not quite the word you were looking for" variety. (Ships founder, they don't flounder. Well, they might, but not the way you mean.)
It's entirely possible I only finished this because at the times when I really went, "...but I don't care!" I was either stuck on a train with half an hour between here and home, or I was within a hundred pages of the end. (Yes, I didn't care within a hundred pages of the end. That level of general disinterest.) And part of my irritation is that I feel that this really could have been a thoroughly entertaining book, but all of the elements were under-utilised. The ruthlessness and emotional trauma of the spies was in some ways over- and in some ways under-played (Swyfte's woe-is-me ruminations on the spy's lot were often trite). Some big plot comes out at the end when it would have been used throughout. And don't even get me started on the fact that all the Fae are unremittingly evil despite the mentions of "helper" or good faeries. Lack of ambiguity often makes me pull a face, but especially when you're dealing with folk who would probably be found pressed between the dictionary pages at the entry for "ambiguous".
In short: meh.
It's entirely possible I only finished this because at the times when I really went, "...but I don't care!" I was either stuck on a train with half an hour between here and home, or I was within a hundred pages of the end. (Yes, I didn't care within a hundred pages of the end. That level of general disinterest.) And part of my irritation is that I feel that this really could have been a thoroughly entertaining book, but all of the elements were under-utilised. The ruthlessness and emotional trauma of the spies was in some ways over- and in some ways under-played (Swyfte's woe-is-me ruminations on the spy's lot were often trite). Some big plot comes out at the end when it would have been used throughout. And don't even get me started on the fact that all the Fae are unremittingly evil despite the mentions of "helper" or good faeries. Lack of ambiguity often makes me pull a face, but especially when you're dealing with folk who would probably be found pressed between the dictionary pages at the entry for "ambiguous".
In short: meh.