"Age of Swords continues the epic story of the war between humankind and the elves--and of ordinary people becoming legendary heroes. It introduces a set of new characters: the dwarves, whose magical weaponcraft could decide the war. It's up to our heroes to win over the dwarves to the side of humankind...or else lose the war forever"--
About all I can offer is that these 500 pages are mediocre. Really mediocre. It feels like I spent a few days watching my wheels spin in mud.... The story isn't that bad, it just goes nowhere much; although, at least, it takes along time getting there.
A perfectly executed follow up to the Age of Myth. I was fully invested in the characters early on, and was happily carried along on their journeys with them as they grew and met the challenges in their paths. One of the best 2nd books in a series I've read in a long time, and that is quite a list. A truly wonderful ensemble cast of characters made this a joy to read.
Having opinions on single books in a series is difficult, because by book 4 I don't remember what I know from just this book and what was set up in previous books. I must admit, there were nice character things happening, on the other hand, it emphasised that a character I love (Persephone) had to wait a whole book to have a tiny character development. And this book is the first in the series that is actually just the first third of another story (t.i. too many plot points are still open by the end) to be taken as a book instead of first third of one. I guess the most interesting development in this one was Tesh's, I'm still curious how he turns out.
Fantasy books already require a significant suspension of disbelief. The worlds are silly, but it's ok, because they're also wondrous and offer up adventures. When there's interaction between three languages and new words are being made up and it's all just normal English, it's already a bit jarring, but fair enough, who wants to deal with con-langs anyway. I don't see the purpose yet, but all right. Then there's inventing things from actual human history in a matter of weeks, deciphering dead language sounds from written text, training montages that aren't even montages... it diminishes the credibility of anything that happens this story, not to mention that these superpowers are treated as if that's just normal human things, compared to actual over powered magic. This pushes the world from silly (in terms of being realistic) but fantastical into very, very obviously silly for all …
Ohh, boy, it went downhill fast.
Fantasy books already require a significant suspension of disbelief. The worlds are silly, but it's ok, because they're also wondrous and offer up adventures. When there's interaction between three languages and new words are being made up and it's all just normal English, it's already a bit jarring, but fair enough, who wants to deal with con-langs anyway. I don't see the purpose yet, but all right. Then there's inventing things from actual human history in a matter of weeks, deciphering dead language sounds from written text, training montages that aren't even montages... it diminishes the credibility of anything that happens this story, not to mention that these superpowers are treated as if that's just normal human things, compared to actual over powered magic. This pushes the world from silly (in terms of being realistic) but fantastical into very, very obviously silly for all the wrong reasons.
But all right, it's a fantasy book, let the character interactions overshadow the flaws in realness, except there another annoyance of mine shows up. In an interaction between a teacher and a student, the teacher says that the way to overcome fear of failure is to find success. And I just find that wrong. In the real world, in training scenarios, you fail and fail again, the way you overcome fear of failure, is to realise that the world doesn't end when you fail, that it's not that bad to fail, that you can get up and try again, until finally you succeed. But this book is all about insta-success and I hate that. Oh, there's cost, but the cost is others, not your hard and boring work.
No matter what reservations I seem to have about any of his books, Sullivan's skills as a straight up storyteller are strong enough that I find myself flipping pages with a smile on my face. It's entertaining core epic fantasy.