Fantasy Book Club discussion

Post here if you havealready read this book. Tell us how you liked or didn't like it.

Use spoiler tags if you can. < spoiler > insert text spoiler > only don't leave spaces between the word spoiler and the <>. It looks like this if you do it right: (view spoiler)[insert spoiler here (hide spoiler)]

I finished it last night and liked it over all. The book is extremely strong in character building and interaction between characters. I felt it collapsed a little in the big climax/fight scene, telling it completely from one character's POV, then switching to another. The sequential thing didn't work for me. I've seen other authors accomplish this more seamlessly.

I liked the development of Rasaad from a single focus zealot to a beginning understanding of the complexity of life and that few things are black or white.

The style was quite nice with a light touch.

I agree the climax suffered a bit under pressure to resolve so much so quickly. I hadn't caught the one character POV aspect though, so thanks for pointing that out.

I liked the book as well, especially all the character development.

What I liked most was the characterization and the setting. I, too, felt the ending collapsed a little.

I also liked the toll that magic took on the magi, it was a nifty way of keeping the Deus Ex Machina-ness of magic in check. However, I'm not entirely sure if the magic system was consistent throughout the book. Dawoud pays a heavy price for being a magus, but what about spell creators, do they not pay the same price? If they don't, why? Are they more like the alkhemists? And if the magi pays a heavier toll, shouldn't the spells and magical defenses of the palace burn through palace magi like nobody's business? Or are they all young men where the added years aren't as noticeable?

Evilynn wrote: "What I liked most was the characterization and the setting. I, too, felt the ending collapsed a little.

I also liked the toll that magic took on the magi, it was a nifty way of keeping the Deus E..."

Good questions, Evilynn. Does anyone know if there will be a sequel?

Though I enjoyed the book, I was a bit disappointed. I believe that really great fantasy should respond in some way to the real world. It should maybe reflect on or explore the real worlld indirectly by telling a story in a created setting. I had high hopes that this book would use its departure from the typical fantasy setting to do so in an interesting relevant way, but it did not, instead it was a good, fun story that just so happened to draw on a different set of mythologies. In a way, it is not really fair of me to expect this book to do something special because the author draws on his Arab-Amerrican heritage, but I think Ii would haveuse similar feelings about a similar tale set inof a midieval europe like setting. -

Sandra aka Sleo wrote: "
Good questions, Evilynn. Does anyone know if there will be a sequel? "

Its GoodReads page now has the title as "Throne of the Crescent Moon (The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, #1)", so I assume there will be more books at some point.

Evilynn wrote: "Sandra aka Sleo wrote: "
Good questions, Evilynn. Does anyone know if there will be a sequel? "

Its GoodReads page now has the title as "Throne of the Crescent Moon (The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, #1..."

Oh! Hadn't looked at that. Good.

Sandra aka Sleo wrote: "Oh! Hadn't looked at that. Good. "

I'm reasonably sure it wasn't there a couple of months ago (or whenever I added the book to my to-read shelf), because I tend to avoid reading unfinished series (thanks to Mr Jordan and Mr Martin...).

I debated a lot on whether to rate this as three or four stars. In the end, I had to go with four. Saladin Ahmed definitely deserves it for the work performed here.

What really makes me like this book is that Ahmed offers something a little different with it. It's not merely the window dressing of an Arabian-style city, but rather that he offers readers a grown up and sometimes violent fairy tale. A reader can easily complain about the limited explanations for how magic works in this reality, and at first, this bothered me. A little more than a third of the way through the book, I realized that Ahmed's handling of the magic and the story itself resembles the magic often found in fairy tale. In fairy tales, we are not given precise details about how wizards and witches perform their craft. They simply speak a fancy set of words and cool stuff happens that moves the plot. Ahmed does, at least, make it clear that these magics exact a price on the user, but that's about as far as he goes with that. Once I recognized and accepted this, I found I enjoyed this book a lot.

For an epic fantasy novel, Ahmed provides a lean story. No sooner would I see something that seemed unnecessary to the book than he would turn around and surprise me by putting it to good use. Everything within this book serves a purpose, and that is good writing.

If I must pick a gripe with this novel, then it would be the prologue. This scene just felt so unnecessarily violent to me. Ahmed does somewhat make good on this later by having three prologues (one for the start of each act of this story) which lead up to an important moment within the final battle. I'm still not convinced this works well for the story, though. The first prologue cuts a very fine line between establishing how bad the "Big Bad" is and "torture porn." I do think these scenes help establish why Orshado changes only certain people into what amounts to zombies, but I don't know that it excuses the way the book starts. In the end, the prologue left a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm not sure I would have read the book beyond that if it wasn't for it being June's book of the month for the "Fantasy Book Club" here on Goodreads.

This paragraph is a big spoiler, by the way, so if you don't want to know important info about the final battle, then skip to the next paragraph. (view spoiler)[ Still with me? Great. Okay, there's this prophecy about the Cobra Throne. In this prophecy it clearly states that "this power could be called only by spilling the blood of a ruler's eldest heir upon it." Well, the ruler gets killed before the eldest heir's blood is spilled. My point is that once the ruler is killed, then doesn't the eldest heir technically cease to be an heir and become the new ruler? This strikes me as a rather obvious goof on the part of the bad guys who decide to kill the ruler on a whim. Yet, the spell still works. This annoyed me, but I couldn't help but wonder if this was intentional on Ahmed's part and there will be a repercussion from this. Who knows? Suppose we'll find out in the future books. (hide spoiler)]

What Ahmed definitely makes good on is providing a larger than life adventure with some entertaining characters. He also manages to take what is clearly the first book in a larger story and makes it a tale that stands on its own and doesn't leave me feeling cheated. There are plot threads which will clearly carry over into the next book, but even those storylines are provided a bit of closure for the reader. That is no small task. For that alone, Ahmed deserves praise. The challenge for his second book will be to let that story expand as it clearly must, revealing more of the world and perhaps expanding the cast, and to still maintain control of the overall tale.

Bill wrote: "I debated a lot on whether to rate this as three or four stars. In the end, I had to go with four. Saladin Ahmed definitely deserves it for the work performed here.

What really makes me like this ..."

^Like^

Some good points, Bill. I missed the point you caught in your spoiler! Interesting.

Sandra, I am SOOOO curious to see if there really will be some repercussion to that spoiler, but I will be the first to admit that I'm probably over-analyzing it. That and it wouldn't be difficult for Ahmed to explain it as a matter of ritual formalities as to when an heir truly becomes the new ruler. Still... it's always fun to wonder. hehe

So, an interesting little addition to that spoiler I pointed out regarding the Cobra Throne. The author read my review and posted this Tweet in response:

"@saladinahmed Well, huh. You're the first reader to catch a complication that will emerge with the Throne's magic. That's all I'll say..."

Now, I'm REALLY curious!

It's interesting to read all the comments here and see the mostly quite positive response. I actually wasn't amazed by this one. The setting was interesting and the characters were fairly well-developed, but I thought much more could have been done with the idea of the ghul hunting thing and found the plot to be relatively low on actual action. Really, there were only a couple memorable actions scenes in the entirety of the book and even those felt clipped to me -- abbreviated, in a way I can't quite put my finger on.

Most of all, though, I'm a character guy. To really love a story I have to really love (or in some cases love to hate) a character or characters in it. Mostly, in this case, I was relatively ambivalent. The most appealing aspect of the story, in my opinion was the relationship between the alchemist and her husband, which I found touching, particularly given his accelerated aging in comparison to her.

That said, I'm interested to know what kind of Khalif the Falcon Prince will make...though I'm not sure that'll be enough to draw me back for book two...

Matt wrote: "It's interesting to read all the comments here and see the mostly quite positive response. I actually wasn't amazed by this one. The setting was interesting and the characters were fairly well-de..."

Matt, I think if the book had been longer, it might have lost me and for a lot of the points you raise here. That strikes me as one of the main challenges Ahmed will face with a second book. The temptation would be to make the next book longer, I suspect, and I'm not sure if that will be a good thing.

Bill wrote: "Matt, I think if the book had been longer, it might have lost me and for a lot of the points you raise here. That strikes me as one of the main challenges Ahmed will face with a second book. The temptation would be to make the next book longer, I suspect, and I'm not sure if that will be a good thing. "

I agree that the length was good. I don't mean that in a bad way -- I wasn't hoping it would end or anything -- I just think that the shorter length kept the pacing up a bit and made some of the weaknesses more tolerable.

I'd likely have finished it either way. I just may not have enjoyed it as much were it longer.

Honestly, I'm not completely sure why I didn't fall in love with the book. I can definitely see Ahmed's potential and I like his writing style...I'll be keeping an eye towards his development as an author.

I wasn't blown away by Elantris, either, as another debut work, but pretty much everything else I've read by Sanderson since has really been outstanding.

We'll see how things go...

I have to give him bonus points for having an old, fat & crochety protagonist.

Joseph wrote: "I have to give him bonus points for having an old, fat & crochety protagonist."

Yes! I totally relate! :-)

Just finished yesterday. I found it very average. It's not really what I expected. A little heavy on the religion for my tastes and I usually don't mind religion in books. I really couldn't stand Adoulla in the first third of the book, but he got better later on. I did feel sorry for him when (view spoiler)[he lost his home in the fire. (hide spoiler)] I liked the creatures...the manjackal (Anubis? lol) and Zamia's (view spoiler)[lion form (hide spoiler)] was cool. The last twenty pages or so were good. I don't know if I liked it enough to want to continue with the series though.

Horror-movie like prologue almost made me leave this book but I'm glad I went on. It took some getting used to to the characters; young characters were quite irritating with all their black-and-white, know-it-all stubborn attitudes and constant defiance. But I love how they evolved. I especially like the scene (view spoiler)[ when Doctor called Raseed "a good man, a good partner" with his last breath (hide spoiler)]

Overall, I enjoyed reading the book and I'm interested to see how plot will thicken in the next book.

I'll join those who found the book to be pretty good but not great. I enjoyed the setting, and the general mythos that was being revealed. But when it comes to fantasy of this sort, I really think the character development needs to drive the story. There were several really interesting characters, but I didn't really fall in love with any of them the way I do with my favorite fantasy novelists. In some ways, the characters remained just a little flat for me. The relationship between Raseed and Zamia was predictable from the start, and i never really felt I could understand what was drawing them together.

Overall, though, I'd be willing to give a next book a shot to see if it improves.

I just finished this book yesterday evening.

I read it through and did not have any major problems with it, but as others have mentioned, I didn't see myself developing any attachments to any of the characters. The characters were well-described and consistent (except the young-love-at-first-sight thing), but there was nothing inspiring.

Similarly, as mentioned above, the action scenes were rather short, clipped and anti-climactic.

Lastly, in the criticism category, I agreed with the post pointing out the lack of relevance. Reading it and the problems described, it could have been written 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago. I think fantasy should have an element of social commentary, which I guess it did, but it was so vague and general that it applies to any time and fails to enlighten.

On the positive side, I think it is great to see an elderly protagonist, I think the setting was nicely described and put together, and I think the Arabian-inspired magic system was well-presented, showing the effects without wasting time explaining the mechanics.

Nothing about the book made me eager for a sequel, but I would not be strongly opposed to reading a sequel either.

All in all I found it an enjoyable read. It's nice to see some non-conventional aspects: An older protagonist, a "shorter" work (rather than thick bricks), and a fresh take on setting.