Take a letter Miss Jones: To Nick Boalch, Re: Redemption of Althalus:
> On 2007-04-03, ~~ Shelly ~~ <~~> wrote:
>> Did anybody besides myself like "The Redemption of Althalus"?
>
> I didn't actively hate it; but it was a bit of a disappointment. It felt
> like a proper series had been crammed into one book so that there wasn't
> any proper time given to (a) actual character development and (b) making
> the bad guys actually competent. What was left was Eddings clichés tied
> together: not one of his best.
In fact, the beginning, where he was a kind of Action-Silk, was quite
fun, but the moment he met Aphrael^WDweia onwards it went downhill a
bit.
I don't object to Eddings' use of Archtypes - it is, as he keeps telling
us, a traditional method of storytelling - especially as the
Theif & Paladin archtypes (The combination of Silk & Sparhawk Althalus
becomes) are two of Eddings' Archtypes I actually like. The main problem
is that you can claim traditional story telling style as much as you
like, but the story wasn't actually much good. Also, the non-"uptime"
banter sessions which so helped the characterisation in previous series
were erradicated by the "Magic House" concept.
And such. I can go on about this for a while, but RoA isn't one of my
favourite books, no. It is, however, better than PtS and every single
one of the new series.
--
Aquarion.
Last of the Free Aqs.


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