James G. Anderson (1) (1967–)

A standard epic fantasy with all the usual elements and nothing particularly new to add. Told in a verbose manner that consumed twice as many pages as were necessary for the amount of story covered, salted with only occasional flashes of adequacy, the Stoneholding suffers from a number of flaws that plague the genre: long boring sections filled with exposition; characters dashing from one place to another with great haste and intensity, but insufficient motive; and then more long passages of justification for it all, but without really engaging the reader. In short, way too much time spent explaining the story to me, and way not enough time spent telling it to me.

The final straw came when I hurled the book across the room for the second time within 10 pages, furious at the stupidity of the protagonist and his friends - the kind of stupidity that makes them no longer worthy of the respect necessary to make me care whether they succeed or fail. Once I've begun hoping they'll die, it's time to cut my losses and move on to better fare.

So long Ahn Norvys. I won't be coming back.… (mehr)