The Review Conspiracy

Hey,

So despite wanting to get to bed early to offset the Daylight Savings Time Syndrome, I stayed up later than I wanted to finishing The Crown Conspiracy by Michael J. Sullivan. This might make you think it's a great book.

I think it's merely a good book. It's a first novel and while it's technically quite good, there's still some lumpiness in the actual story itself. It's difficult for me to put my finger on exactly what's off about it other than to say it feels like a first novel.

The book really wants to be The Lies of Locke Lamora or or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books. You've got Royce the thief and Hadrian the fighter and they operate as freelance acquisition agents. There's a short intro scene where they get to show off how skilled they are and then there's the "get a job that seems a bit fishy but turns out to be totally fishy" sub-plot and away we go. In short order the pair stand accused of killing the king. They promptly escape and spend a good chunk of the rest of the book clearing their name and attempting to figure out who actually killed the king.

There are quite a few well-done bits of standard fantasy fare. The Elves (or half-elves really) are slaves/social pariahs. The mythic and historical background has some neat twists. The wizard was a very well-drawn character. Some of the political maneuvering scenes by the bad guys near the end was interesting (but utterly invalidated by the end of the book). Oh, and the magical prison was fantastic and completely underutilized.

The book is part of a series but the author seems very committed to making sure that each book stands on it's own, and the story here stops at a very sensible place. The big question will be how much exposition needs to dump out on each book to catch up new readers and whether or not that's just wasted page count for people following along. There are definitely plot threads that will run through all the books so those will take some managing.

Overall, like I say, it's a good book. It's got some issues (like most first novels do), but it's far from the worst thing I've ever read in my life. I'm not anxious to snatch up the next book in the series (due out in April), but I'm not unhappy I bought this one.

later
Tom

The Review Conspiracy

Hey,

So despite wanting to get to bed early to offset the Daylight Savings Time Syndrome, I stayed up later than I wanted to finishing The Crown Conspiracy by Michael J. Sullivan. This might make you think it's a great book.

I think it's merely a good book. It's a first novel and while it's technically quite good, there's still some lumpiness in the actual story itself. It's difficult for me to put my finger on exactly what's off about it other than to say it feels like a first novel.

The book really wants to be The Lies of Locke Lamora or or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books. You've got Royce the thief and Hadrian the fighter and they operate as freelance acquisition agents. There's a short intro scene where they get to show off how skilled they are and then there's the "get a job that seems a bit fishy but turns out to be totally fishy" sub-plot and away we go. In short order the pair stand accused of killing the king. They promptly escape and spend a good chunk of the rest of the book clearing their name and attempting to figure out who actually killed the king.

There are quite a few well-done bits of standard fantasy fare. The Elves (or half-elves really) are slaves/social pariahs. The mythic and historical background has some neat twists. The wizard was a very well-drawn character. Some of the political maneuvering scenes by the bad guys near the end was interesting (but utterly invalidated by the end of the book). Oh, and the magical prison was fantastic and completely underutilized.

The book is part of a series but the author seems very committed to making sure that each book stands on it's own, and the story here stops at a very sensible place. The big question will be how much exposition needs to dump out on each book to catch up new readers and whether or not that's just wasted page count for people following along. There are definitely plot threads that will run through all the books so those will take some managing.

Overall, like I say, it's a good book. It's got some issues (like most first novels do), but it's far from the worst thing I've ever read in my life. I'm not anxious to snatch up the next book in the series (due out in April), but I'm not unhappy I bought this one.

later
Tom