Review: Spell of Fate

Spell of Fate by Mayer Alan Brenner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I recently read a book on Roger Zelazny that talked about how he deliberately turned away from overwriting, and how some people thought he sacrificed depth in his stories as a result. This book has, if anything, the opposite problem; it's trying to be deep and complex, and the author doesn't quite pull it off, so it ends up murky and slow-moving instead.

The main problem with this (and the series generally) is that there are too many characters, and too many plot threads, and the proportion of reflection to action is too high, especially for sword-and-sorcery. It's entertaining enough that I keep reading, but it's never going to make it to my Best of the Year.

Also, it needed a bit more editing even before it was scanned. Though there don't appear to be a lot of obvious scan errors, so that's something.

It does finally get to action by the end, and then stops before the resolution, which presumably we will get in the last volume. I'll wait until that volume drops in price, as I did with the other three; $7.99 USD is too much for me to pay for a fairly entertaining book with significant, though not fatal, flaws.

Hangs onto its fourth star by its fingernails, since I do enjoy the characters (even though there are too many) and the story (even though I have to beat the thickets for it).

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