Queen of Demons

Well past due, I’ve finally managed to power my way through the second book of David Drake’s Lord of the Isles series. The first book was really good. There were some flaws with the writing but I could get past those because it WAS a good book and a first book. The second book is much worse.

In the first book, they killed off the best character and everyone else fell into their predetermined roles, using no logical deduction but always coming to the right conclusions. The critics talked about how well Drake threaded multiple story-lines together and tied them at the end. Shouldn’t it matter that three of those four story lines didn’t matter? I mean, Garric, who is the main character, and his sister and two friends each have their own story arc but none but Garric’s (at least until the end) has anything to do with the rest of the story.

Granted, the scenes in and of themselves were largely entertaining. Like the one group of humans who were dumped into an alternate dimension and built a fort so that they could fight off a group of bad guys every night. That was kind of amusing. But it didn’t have anything to do with anything else.

It was kind of like reading a Conan book that just wouldn’t end.

But now I’m done it and I’m glad because if I stuck it on my bookshelf unfinished, I’d have to start all over again, again, and now I can put it away, knowing that it’s not in my queue. I hate giving up on things.

Minigoal #5

On to The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. Next Monday, I expect to have The Subtle Knife finished.

Oh, and by Friday, I’ll have another blog entry up.

Until later,

39 books to go!