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The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches II When your first book has a title like The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches, you know that you have to kick things up a notch for the sequel. Fortunately for Stanek, this isn't a sequel. Really, it's just one story that, written properly, would easily fit into one, maybe two volumes, but he chopped it into four books because you can make more money doing it that way.
Chapter One: Passage “We cannot just bed down here surely,” came a grumble from a mixture of voices (page 5). Stanek could instantly win my undying respect if the next line was “We can. And don’t call me Shirley.” But it’s not, and as such, it’s just yet another poorly phrased line in a poorly phrased book. ( Read more... )Tags: robert stanek, sporkings
Current Location: Alive, once more
Current Mood:  blank
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Chapter Thirteen: The Bottoms Captain Brodst is pondering. He’s deciding whether they should go through the swamp - called The Bottoms, which is a wonderful chapter title - or take the main road, which is longer. However, Duke Ispeth told him that not a single person has come north for over a week. Which is really strange. So - reading between the lines, here - for the past week, everyone that has entered the Bottoms hasn’t come out alive. I mean, there are other ways to interpret that, but that’s a pretty logical conclusion. I would say that you should avoid it. However (and, to show you what I’m dealing with here, I’m preserving the actual formatting that this book uses): Captain Brodst remembered that just after the duke had said that he’d
scratched his head and said, “It’s
probably nothing. In another week or so, I’ll probably find that the roads
were washed out again…” (page 168). So, despite the fact that Captain Brodst feels that something is actually going on, into the swamp they go. ( Read more... )Tags: robert stanek, sporkings
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Chapter Ten: First Lessons Vilmos wakes up and hears drums. Xith tells him to take his hand - and then they simply sit there, master and pupil, holding hands. This would be a little weird, except it’s probably a good idea, to make sure Vilmos doesn’t do something stupid. The drums come closer. There are voices as well. They sit there for awhile until finally Xith says that it’s huntsmen and trackers, out hunting some sort of animal. Now, maybe their method of hunting differs from mine, but generally speaking it’s not a good idea to beat on a drum to tell your prey that you’re coming. In some situations, such as when you’re trying to scare animals and drive them into a trap, this would work, but if that were the case they wouldn’t need trackers. ( Read more... )Tags: robert stanek, sporkings
Current Mood:  hopeful
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Chapter Nine: Ambush What do we do now Brother? We die, Brother Galan, Seth said coldly, simply, but not until we fight honorably and die honorably. All eyes keyed to the hulking masses of multi-sailed vessels that hungrily approached (page 120). Right. So when we left our Elf buddies - back in chapter three, Seth was still in Elfville, having been told he had to leave to go somewhere to do something with other people. Now he’s sailing in the middle of the ocean and has apparently just been ambushed. Don’t worry - in interest of avoiding boring exposition and things like that, Stanek isn’t going to explain how any of this came about. Good thing, too, because the incredibly compelling stories of Vilmos and Adrina are way more interesting. ( Sorry for my prolonged absence. Real life beckons... )Tags: robert stanek, sporkings
Current Mood:  sleepy
Current Music: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
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Chapter Eight: Guidance Adrina rides along thinking about the different cities. Alderan’s supposed to be really beautiful. Then she spurs her horse up to between Keeper Martin and Emel, who’s mad at her for some reason. She apologizes for whatever she did and promises that she won’t do it again, and then immediately goes back on her promise: “Are you at least going to tell me what you know?” Emel asked. “Or do I get nothing in repayment?” Before she might have decided to come clean and admit she didn’t know anything, but as she considered his question, she decided instead to feed him along. “Well, you actually didn’t help me. It was Father Jacob who did, and he already knows the plan.” (page 104). I have to say again…these characters are supposed to be FRIENDS? More importantly, Adrina is supposed to be our heroine? She already lied to him, how is continuing to lie to him and keeping her mad at him going to help her in any way? Also, what does “feed him along” mean? ( Read more... )Tags: robert stanek, sporkings
Current Mood: tired
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We begin with idiocy: “I will not hurt you,” said the now charismatic voice from behind him (page 77). How exactly is this voice suddenly charismatic? The voice decides to start off terrifying and then switch itself over to being charismatic? For that matter, Vilmos is terrified. It’s unlikely that he would suddenly realize that the disembodied voice has become charismatic. For that matter, Vilmos is a reasonably stupid 12-year-old boy. He probably wouldn’t be using words like charismatic. He turns around a few more times and finally sees an incredibly old man standing there. He looks like he’d blow away at a stiff breeze: The aged man leaned his weight against his long, misshaped, walking stick, edging poised lips closer to Vilmos’ ear. “Do not let the body fool you boy,” he whispered, “I will not blow away in the wind” (page 79). I can’t think of any reason to emphasize the word blow unless Stanek was trying to cram even more subtle homoeroticism into that paragraph. ( But he wouldn't be trying to do THAT, now would he? )Tags: robert stanek, sporkings
Current Mood:  sad
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