Posted November 26, 2017
A Darkness at Sethanon
After Silverthorn, my expectations for A Darkness at Sethanon may have been quite low, but it hardly seems possible not to be surprised and amazed by it either way. The prologue sets the stage and, while the early chapters otherwise remind of the rather immature heroic fantasy from before and the supposed "surprises" are all too obvious, the story eventually transforms into an epic of great intensity and mind-boggling scope, dealing with the fate of the entire universe, touching upon the concept of other dimensions, and going all the way to the beginning of time and back. The pacing does vary due to the alternating points of view, but overall it becomes more and more alert and new elements, including actual surprises, keep being thrown at the reader as well. It would provide excellent material for a movie, or in fact for a few of them, and some scenes may even require this, being almost too much to be left to the reader's imagination... Though, at the same time, some may be impossible to properly portray in a mere movie as well.
That said, there are many flaws, starting with an unexpected number of typos, especially considering the fact that the edition I read was printed decades after the initial release, plus that, at least in this edition, there are also two places where the space indicating a new scene is missing and said new scene starts so abruptly that I wonder whether at least its first paragraph may not be missing as well. Yet those are minor matters, far more important being the fact that too much is skipped, too many questions are left unanswered, too many things seem unexplained or to not quite add up not because the author is withholding information for later use, but because he doesn't know it either. The book is far too short and, while they appear to have greatly improved by the time it was written, the author's skills not sufficient to do justice to such an audaciously ambitious scope and setting... Then again, I'm not sure that anyone's could ever be.
Rating: 4/5
After Silverthorn, my expectations for A Darkness at Sethanon may have been quite low, but it hardly seems possible not to be surprised and amazed by it either way. The prologue sets the stage and, while the early chapters otherwise remind of the rather immature heroic fantasy from before and the supposed "surprises" are all too obvious, the story eventually transforms into an epic of great intensity and mind-boggling scope, dealing with the fate of the entire universe, touching upon the concept of other dimensions, and going all the way to the beginning of time and back. The pacing does vary due to the alternating points of view, but overall it becomes more and more alert and new elements, including actual surprises, keep being thrown at the reader as well. It would provide excellent material for a movie, or in fact for a few of them, and some scenes may even require this, being almost too much to be left to the reader's imagination... Though, at the same time, some may be impossible to properly portray in a mere movie as well.
That said, there are many flaws, starting with an unexpected number of typos, especially considering the fact that the edition I read was printed decades after the initial release, plus that, at least in this edition, there are also two places where the space indicating a new scene is missing and said new scene starts so abruptly that I wonder whether at least its first paragraph may not be missing as well. Yet those are minor matters, far more important being the fact that too much is skipped, too many questions are left unanswered, too many things seem unexplained or to not quite add up not because the author is withholding information for later use, but because he doesn't know it either. The book is far too short and, while they appear to have greatly improved by the time it was written, the author's skills not sufficient to do justice to such an audaciously ambitious scope and setting... Then again, I'm not sure that anyone's could ever be.
Rating: 4/5
