cavalary's reviews
269 reviews

DISCLAIMER: This comment will be just like the book, that is to say tasteless, meaningless and pointless. Besides that, it will contain language that some might consider offensive. That said, don't complain if you read further and don't like what you see.

Honestly, this was the worst piece of shit that I ever read. For the first two or three chapters, some scenes might have aroused me, but after that all the senseless violence initially just countered the arousal, then annoyed me, then bored me and ultimately made me feel like throwing up...
What's the point of all of that anyway? I doubt that even someone who is into BDSM would like things that rough that often. Now if that's what miss Rice and her husband are into, fine by me, but when you release a book, do you mind making it at least a little appealing to others as well? I mean what the fuck was all that?

Spoiler

And nothing will be done that will risk injury to the love slave... No shit? Anal gang raping without lube doesn't risk injury? Eating off the floor is not a health hazard? Spending entire days half buried in trash or spending 36 hours tied up by hands and legs from the ceiling, with some sweet stuff on your pussy to attract the flies is healthy?
And Prince Alexi says their masters aren't interested in their bowel movements, so they allow them privacy for those. How? When they have to sleep tied up on a wall or from bed posts or spend whole days like that? What do they do? Hire wizards to teleport the piss and shit out of them to the chamber pots?
The lack of any kind of story was to be expected, but there's another thing that I don't get. That entire Court seems interested only in torturing the poor Princes and Princesses sent by nearby kingdoms as tribute. When exactly do they still have time to actually run their kingdom so well as to deserve those tributes, to keep all those nearby kingdoms fearing them?

Saying it again, this book, if it can be called a book, really made me feel like throwing up!

Not as hard as Gravity Dreams, The Ethos Effect or Adiamante, but certainly just as deep. The thoughts are less spelled out and more included in the story. Great ideas and good story. Feel bad that it was the last SF book by Modesitt I could get my hands on...

I must start by saying that the author sure liked to show off his vocabulary and penchant for flowery descriptions. Worse, this bled into the characters, the result being even more jarring because this style is also used to depict the thoughts or speech of those highly unlikely to even know a fair number of those words, much less use them so often. And the fact that the point of view suddenly, and usually very briefly, switches in the middle of some scenes only adds to the confusion.
Other than that, though some events unfold, it doesn't quite feel like much is happening until the last two chapters, and either way the book is quite short. In addition, some things, such as Baus' magic dagger, are insufficiently explained and tend to simply appear at certain moments and be ignored at others when they'd definitely be useful. And while I'm at things, should also point out the highly unusual lack of any ranged weapons bar those catapults on one ship's deck. No cannons, no bows or crossbows, no pistols, nothing, which doesn't make any sense.

This is definitely an interesting take on vampires. They make sense, they're reasonably well explained and they rather fit into the world, or at least some of them do. Neither the properly dreadful beasts of old nor the very differently dreadful modern take, Martin's vampires are refined ultimate predators that, like humans, can choose to use their abilities for good or ill, and in the end to obey or rebel against their rulers, however powerful they may be. In many ways, it can be said they're similar to Anne Rice's, but in some other notable ones they're different, plus that this book was published when only Interview with the Vampire was out and a certain other series of hers was quite some years away, which rather limits the odds of that being the inspiration for many of the elements seen here.
Otherwise, Martin was Martin even back then, with his detailed descriptions and explanations... Including of food, of course. Sadly, this book has an extremely narrow focus which impacts not only the way in which the world is portrayed but also the characters, as all but a few are developed poorly, if at all, and have little actual impact or significance. You'll be able to "see" and, if you're so inclined, properly understand everything the author deemed crucial and, depending on preference, either trudge through or delight yourself with quite a number of other little details that he for some reason liked to include, but everything else tends to get rather thrown aside with a shrug. And the final confrontation does require some suspension of disbelief.
That said, while approaching it with the idea that it's written by the author of A Song of Ice and Fire will cause people to have wrong expectations and perhaps judge it unfairly harshly for that reason, it is a very good book that I'd recommend to anyone with any interest in proper vampires, steamboats or simply good stories with limited scope. I'd have wished for a couple hundred more pages if they'd have been dedicated to the other characters, perhaps to their personal histories, and to presenting a slightly wider image of the time and place, real as it may be, but what it's intended to do, it does quite well.

This time around, most of the action happens around Geralt rather than because of him, his contribution often being minor or even non-existent. However, this seems to offer the author even greater freedom, the result being a perhaps wider scope and worldbuilding, action, character development, adept social, political and environmental commentary, depictions of the horrors of war, and not only of war, and large amounts of comic relief all rolled into one, the biggest flaw perhaps being that the end result is too funny for its own good. Sure, this may make it easier to stomach for many, but I think a story that, in itself, is so dark and, frequently, deep could have done with taking itself more seriously.
Still, that and the fact that a few dialogs, particularly early on, don't seem to flow quite right are the only things I can really say against this book and, even if I'd be inclined to try, maybe more because of a particular decision made in the last chapter than anything else, I can't quite adequately justify not letting it be the first that I give a maximum rating to in a few years, and only the second in several, at least since it's out of five. Perhaps not strictly for its own merits, but it builds upon the previous ones in the series, paves the road for the next, and I also read it after finally finishing The Witcher, so I could "see" and understand some things better.

Being a single book, it seems shallow somehow. In fantasy, you need to do a lot of writing to create the world the action is happening in.
The start is bad, but later on it seems it was purposefully written like that, and it gets better as you go along. Quite nice in the end actually, and "throws" a few ideas towards those who care to pick up on them.