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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Goonalan" data-source="post: 9040009" data-attributes="member: 16069">#192 Swords of Dragonfire by Ed Greenwood (Knights Myth Drannor 2) Read 21/5/23 to 7/6/23[ATTACH=full]287096[/ATTACH]Rubbish.Read.Stay safe and well you lovely people.Cheers goonalan.[spoiler= A more comprehensive appraisal]Rubbish & Silly.It took me 17 days to get through this one, and more than once- when I had thrown it across the room again, I thought I was never going to make it, and that my quest was at an end... but I just kept on going, sometimes managing just ten pages a day.Why you ask yourself, what's so bad about it?It's not the realms- the realms are wonderful here, as always. Same with the language- it all feels so real, authentic- or at least authentic to the world as Ed Greenwood knows it, and it's his backyard afterall.But the plot, the story, and the comic/silly/absurd way the author trips through it.I hated it.The Knights of Myth Drannor (KoMD) are okay- two Laurel & Hardy (not even) priests, a quiet but oh so beautiful neophyte mage, a sturdy and butch (Brienne of Tarth) fighter and then two actual/real characters. Florin the ranger, who as the book goes on becomes an emptier space on the page, and Pennae- the real hero.I don't like them, save for Pennae, they're not that funny, they seem strikingly daft- incompetent at times, they just blunder on- shouting daft things to each other, most times in the midst of some life or death battle. So, first fifty pages and the set-up, including the roll-over of the action from the last novel in the series, and the set-up for what comes next- all of it. There's nothing left to discover after you have read the first fifty pages. The problem at the inn in Halfhap is a ruse, the real deal is an assassin of sorts, and... all we have left to do is get there- to the end.The end itself, the climax is 2.5 pages long, alas after finishing the intro you have another 320 or so pages to get to it.What happens in those 250 pages- sweet FA, which is a less kind of way of saying- nothing.The KoMD head to inn in Halfhap, it kicks off- people run around, the adventurers, a couple of really great villains (the only plus point at all here, War Wizards, Purple Dragons including the STOOPID Dauntless (I don't know why this is so comic), Zhents, Bully Boys- sent by (comic) nobles.Then everyone dies.Then the grown ups turn up, in increasing ascendancy- Vangey, Manshoon, the Blackstaff, and finally- ELMINSTER (product placement).Elminster is gnomic and weird, apparently Mystra makes him watch/scry on Manshoon, and his lover, in their undercrakers.Rubbish.At this point the lesson is that nothing matters a jot, because the grown ups (Elminster et al) will just show up and put everything right.The problem is the author has to give power and agency to a bunch of folk that have no power or agency- the KoMD.So 150 pages of this stuff- and again, it's not bad in places- particularly when the villains get involved.Then- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!200 pages of the KoMD running down a corridor fighting and slaying War Wizards and Purple Dragons.Hang on- War Wizards and Purple Dragons?Aren't they supposed to be the good guys.Yes.The rest of the book could be solved/resolved if one/any member of the KoMD would just take a moment and explain themselves.The odd thing being that there seems to be no established way for the KoMD to talk to their handlers- maybe this could have got figured out a little earlier in the quest.Also, in the first half of the novel, and in the previous one then everyone is always scrying, all of the time, on everyone else.But for 200 pages it is perfectly acceptable to have the good guys fight the other good guys on the back of a misunderstanding- even to a show down with Vangey.This is all acceptable.This is a realm in which folk are consigned to die because someone didn't check their e-mail (or equivalent). It's nutty, stupid, almost a two finger-up at other authors who try to fashion a believable plot/story and characters that have hard choices.It all just happens to the KoMD, and at the end- Florin is told exactly what to do by Vangey (the grown up) and... FTW.RUBBISH.Then there's the juvenile sniggering treatment of sex, the shock of the lesbian, the frisson of excitement at the thought of a menage a trois. In a different but the same way there's also a visit to a proctologist for one of the stoopid nobles.It feels in places, the second half, that it was written by a very excitable teenager. I learned nothing in the end, because nothing happened, they could have saved Azoun/Vangey et al with a note, or a chat, or... something other than 200 or so pages of kicking the stuffing out of the folk on the same side as the adventurers.Here's what really grips me, at the end this is all just another (typical) day in Cormyr- hundreds lie dead, folk have given their lives- admittedly unimportant people, nobody with a name, just 'the people', and none of the grown ups give a flying f...It's a world I don't want to live in, or even read about.Thank heavens Mr. Greenwood writes better books than this... fingers crossed, because I'm just about to start the next one.It was Radiohead that said-You do it to yourself, you doAnd that's what really hurtsIs that you do it to yourself, just youYou and no one elseYou do it to yourselfYou do it to yourself And with that in mind only another 115 or so novels to go.Love you lots.Keep in mind- imho.goonalan.[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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