Sergey Grishin Grishin itibaren Twinstead
Erich's Plea is book one of The Witchcraft Wars by Tracey Alley. This fantasy novel introduces us to Slade, who has given up his right as the prince of Vestland to become a Druid. After learning of Slade, we realize that he is in prison and endures hours of torture on a daily basis. With all hope of escaping quickly slipping from Slade's grasp, he is startled when he starts receiving a plea for help by his father, Erich. Knowing that he must somehow help his father, Slade finds himself blindly following strangers and not knowing who he can trust. In a few spots throughout the book, the details seemed to get a little thick at times which caused the pace of the story to slow down a bit. However, I really enjoyed how the characters were built and the overall storyline of this story makes for a good read. Each chapter opens up with a small picture and I found this to be wonderful. You get to see the faces of characters who are in the story and even though some looked differently then I imagined when they were described, it was nice to be able to put a face with a name. All in all this was a good read that went quickly and is suitable for most age groups. The main thing that I didn't really like in this story was the ending. I felt as though it was suddenly cut short and I think it would have been beneficial to have a big ending rather than be cut off before the main event. The story builds and leads the reader up to this big life changing ordeal...only that event does not occur in book one. However, I suppose that is a good selling point as I will be getting book two just so I can see what happens next with Slade and the other characters involved.
So this book was recommended to me, touted as being the greatest fantasy book ever. I treat these types of claims with complete skepticism and expect them to EARN that designation. This one, very simply, didn't. Not to say it was a bad book. The writing was clean. A few grammatical and factual details were missed in editing. No big deal. The biggest problem I have though was it's trying so hard to be different and unique... Except it's completely mundane and irrelevant. The story doesn't begin for a hundred or so pages. There is a massive focus on the mundane. The author tries so hard to convince us that he's just a normal innkeeper. But we all know that's not true. Once he finally delves into the past, the author spends a lot of time manufacturing a world for us, and has to lay that world out. It's as if to show us how clever he is, how exacting his descriptions are. Yes, he has thought up some extravagant explanations. And they're all really, really boring. And not always relevant. Now the story does go through some great action. As I said, it's not really poorly written. But how often do we read about the extremely bright orphan who overcomes poverty and adversity? Now obviously since this is first of a trilogy, and it reads as a novel that is first of a trilogy, there's a lot more of the past for us to discover, as well as there will, hopefully, be something of substance happening in the present. Overall, if you like standard fantasy, go for it. But as I discovered and enjoyed both Lord of the Rings and Dragonlance at a young age, I do expect other fantasy novels to wow me. This one hasn't done it yet.