Timewaster's Guide Archive
Departments => Books => Topic started by: Skar on October 19, 2006, 12:24:20 PM
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Read the Review here: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1470&dep=7
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I just finished reading this, and I agreed for the most part with the review. It's a highly unsatisfying ending, because there's no conclusion and no resolution at all--they could have lost most of the overland journey without making me sad, and spent more time on the European war and the return to England.
Still, I liked it a lot more than Throne of Jade (which also suffered from the "long boring travel sequence that takes half the book" syndrome). And the war at the end is great--I kept imagining Peter Jackson doing the movie version, and smiling beatifically at the world.
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I liked Throne of Jade slightly better and rated it 1/2 clock higher because the setting was better than in Black Powder War. Although I will agree with you that the war at the end is pretty dang good and handled well.
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The Chinese setting was good, but it just took too long to get there--I realize that the voyage to China would have been months long, but that doesn't mean she had to portray it in real time. I was seriously ready to just stop reading halfway through that boat trip, but decided to give it a second chance.
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I totaly just put the book down by the time they were about to reach their first oasis. I really didn't want another boring travel story. But I persevered. And, I think that if Novik should have made 1 of 2 choiches, either to cut all the travel, or go a lot more in depth. I personally would prfer the second. The descriptions of the desert and the areas of the Feral dragons could have made very interesting liittle side stories. The wars are exiting, though. I kept pulling out the teacher's edition History book I got as a going away present from my 8th grade teacher, and tracking down this or that battle. I almost cried, even with the disjointed feeling thing, when [spoiler!] the boy and the dragon died. :'( And the Fire-breather promisises to be a great character in the next book. I'm reaaly hoping, though, that the Author stays in Europe with the plague book she is writing at the moment. I knew when we first see the Canadian Dragon that he would be important, I just didn't know how.