Son of Avonar (The Bridge of D'Arnath, #1) in Building a SciFi/Fantasy Library

Sep 10, 2017 Tani rated it really liked it

Shelves: female-author, 2017-novels, epic-fantasy

I'm in a bit of a reading slump, so this is a bit hard for me to rate accurately. I've waffled between 3 and 4 stars. There were definitely aspects of the book that I didn't really care for. However, there was a certain compulsion to keep reading that I associate with higher ratings, so I ended up going for the 4 stars.

This is another book that I've had in my possession for more years than I care to admit. I really loved Berg's Books of the Rai-kirah, so I think I was a little intimidated to re I'm in a bit of a reading slump, so this is a bit hard for me to rate accurately. I've waffled between 3 and 4 stars. There were definitely aspects of the book that I didn't really care for. However, there was a certain compulsion to keep reading that I associate with higher ratings, so I ended up going for the 4 stars.

This is another book that I've had in my possession for more years than I care to admit. I really loved Berg's Books of the Rai-kirah, so I think I was a little intimidated to read this new series, perhaps with good reason. I did not care for this book nearly as much as those. However, I do think that the story had a lot of potential, and I'm eager to see where the second book will take events.

First, the positive. I really enjoyed the main character, Seri. I felt like her emotional journey was the best thing in the book. She starts the story as bitter and wounded, with no hope for the future. How do you motivate a character like that? As this story shows, very delicately, and often with negative emotions rather than positive. As with the other books I've read by Berg, she does not go easy on her characters, and Seri is no exception to that. I think that is a big part of what made me want to go back to reading whenever I put this book down. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Seri.

I also really liked the world-building. Often sorcery is portrayed as predominantly good and accepted in fantasy literature, but this book presents a much darker view. In this world, past sorcerers looked at the world around them and thought that they could make it better by ruling in the place of the current corrupt warriors. However, power corrupts, as we know, and they ended up doing heinous things to the people that they ruled, leading to a massive uprising and the outlawing of sorcery and the burning of all suspected sorcerers. I thought that this was a truly fascinating take on things.

On the less positive side, I had some issues with the structure of the book. There are a ton of flashbacks, and I sincerely struggled with that. We are told right in the beginning what the result of those flashbacks will be, which is a technique that I hate. I find it so hard to read a story when I know how it's going to turn out. I end up just emotionally detaching myself from that part of the story, which is not a way that I enjoy reading. And considering that these flashbacks are a huge part of the emotional backbone of the story, that really detracted from my enjoyment of the story.

I also am very divided on the ending of the book. First of all, I saw through some of the big twists, which I don't normally do. So they ended up being less of a surprise and more a source of frustration. Second, I really can't decide how I feel about a certain pivotal event. Part of me feels like it's cheating, and the other part feels like it's pretty clever, if unethical. I don't know. I guess I'll have to reserve judgment, as I'm sure that the second book will have to spend a lot of time dealing with this issue. ...more

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Jan 10, 2014 Tom rated it liked it

Picked this up at my favorite hole-in-the-wall used book story, near my house. I remembered reading Berg's trilogy Rai-Kirah and liking it.

A couple unusual approaches here for the fantasy genre... first perspective, as told by a female protagonist. Also appreciated the sorcerer-as-persecuted-minority here, some parallels to the persecution of Jews or the Gypsies through our own history: attempts to exterminate them, using them as scape-goats for whatever problems the ruling class had.

I lost inte ...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Derek rated it it was ok

I'll keep reading the series as I find them, but more because I don't like to quit in the middle than because I am overwhelmed with the first book. Seri (& D'Natheil, really) take turns being phenomenally stupid. I don't mind characters without an unrealistic sense of overarching knowledge, but honestly - if you are being hunted, wouldn't you think of SOMETHING better than hanging out in the market completely undisguised? I think you can have a sense of self-preservation even if you don't know t ...more

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