The Completion of the Collapse of Potential

Please bear with me, because this review will be long and not particularly flattering. I will not give any spoilers to the plot. When I first read Blood Song about a year ago, I was very impressed. It was a refreshing blend of storytelling and coming of age story, told from the first person point of view of one character, whitch is hard to do well anymore. I was shocked and disappointed by the second novel in this trilogy, Tower Lord. Mr. Ryan changed his style of telling the story to four different points of view and seemed to lose a lot of control of the plot. The book wandered and was filled with tons of generic fight scenes that got very repetitive after a while.

Despite my misgivings about the third novel, I felt I had to get it because I had made it this far in the series, and I was curious as to whether Ryan would be able to pull his plot threads together or not. The answer to my question was not at all. Queen of Fire wanders as much if not more than Tower Lord, and to make matters worse there seems to be much useless material in the book, that is simply filler.

The next problem I had with this novel were the characters. Besides the four main view point people the rest of the cast, and there are a lot of them, all are very generic badass men and women who are as one dimensional as a piece of paper. I found myself trying desperately to recall all of them when I started the book, because nun of them stuck in my mind from book two. I rarely have this problem of forgetting characters, and to give an example I had no trouble recalling everyone of the A Song of Ice and Fire characters from book to book and that cast could populate a small town.

Problem number three with this book and I suppose series in general is the utter lack of humor. I know what you people are thinking this is a war story and it shouldn't be funny, but throw in a little dark humor or something to spice up the story. I found myself blanking out for a few minutes at a time, because of the tedius conversations and endless supply of very similar battle scenes.

Now we come to the end of this book. NO spoilers, but the ending is rushed, unconvincing, and anticlimactic. Also, Ryan throws in several twists whitch aren't twists, but complete changes of the situation without warning. I won't give anything away, but there are a few moments where the situation flips on its head with no warning or foreshadowing whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, I love a good surprise, but the surprise has to make sense afterword when you think about it. The reader has to be able to put the pieces together, usually from hints the author drops earlier in the book. I love a book that makes one think, but not one that makes no sense. The final smaller issue with this book was the narrator. I am not sure why I never noticed it before, but Mr. Brand has little to no voice between characters. Everyone sounds almost exactly the same. The reason why I still gave him 3 stars is because I do think his storytelling voice is good, he just can't differentiate characters well. Overall, I would not recommend buying this book, unless you really need something to read or you have that hankering to finish the series that I had. This isn't the worst book I have ever read, but it is much closer to the bottom of the list than the top.

166 people found this helpful

I don't think I can finish the book

Book 1 was fantastic, Book 2 was great and book 3 is just sad. Story jumps all over the place, conversations just seem to be babble. I can' take it anymore!!

55 people found this helpful

My, what happened??

the first book read like a dream, and was a very welcomed alternative to the world of westeros. Then something strange happened...the books got progressively less interesting as the characters got less and less interesting. I really wish it didn't, but for me it did. This book was a very difficult disappointment as I wanted to like it. But it was quite long winded and very thin on character and heavy on plot. weak character + complicated plot = tired by the end of chapter 2. I really hoped this would have been better.

49 people found this helpful

Queen of Mean(inglessness)

What would have made Queen of Fire better?

This book is all narrative exposition--some of it rather grandiose. It lacks sense of place, clear purpose, and the characters just mindlessly do what the script tells them. I forgot which side I was supposed to be rooting for and just came to want everyone dead.

48 people found this helpful

A bit disappointing

I was so excited for this book to come out, as I absolutely loved Bloodsong, and Tower Lord was pretty good as well. However, this was a downer compared to the other two books. Steven Brand does an excellent job narrating the book, but he can't control the weak story. Frankly, each book in the series got progressively weaker, in my opinion. Queen Of Fire starts out rather slowly, builds serious steam towards the middle and end, but the climax was very boring. It left me thinking "that's it?" There were also several loose ends from the previous two books that did not get wrapped up (they are barely even mentioned, in fact), and I was left with many questions unanswered that I expected to be addressed in this book.

This is not to say it was wholly unenjoyable or boring, quite the opposite. The series as a whole is great. QOF in entertaining and Anthony Ryan is a great character-driven writer. There were some real "wow!" moments in the book as well as some heart aching moments.

Overall, it's worth a listen if you've read the other two books in the series and want to reach the conclusion of the world that has been created through the Raven's Shadow Saga. Otherwise, you may want to stop with Bloodsong and call it good.

48 people found this helpful

Dull, just very dull

Any additional comments?

What happened, this book was just boring. I really enjoyed the first two. This book just got lost somehow. It derailed from anything even remotely interesting. It is sad to say, but I am not sure I can finish it, it has been a 26 hour waist of my time.

34 people found this helpful

Not of the same quality

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Followed the previous storyline

Has Queen of Fire turned you off from other books in this genre?

The love story is not good...

Any additional comments?

Very disappointed compared to the first two books...how can I get a refund.

30 people found this helpful

Meh

The first two books in the series where light years better than this turd. the worse part was the narrator, no attempt was made to try and differentiate between characters. BOO!

26 people found this helpful

what a disapointment

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would not recommend this to anyone who read the first two as the story here seemed to have degraded a lot.

What could Anthony Ryan have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

If he had not left the story so open and Vaelin in this book seems to have been there simply to make his life miserable with very little to do with the main conflict. in short there was no real end and the final battle against the Ally was simply anticlimactic.

Have you listened to any of Steven Brand’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Steve Brand is the reason this got an overall three stars from me as his performance was great and he is one of my favorite narrators.

Do you think Queen of Fire needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

this would most certainly need a follow-up to clear all of the unanswered questions and give reason to the pointless foreshadowing in the prior books.

20 people found this helpful

It could have been . . .

This could have been such a great series, but this book compared to books one and two was so anti-climatic. I hope Mr. Ryan has plans for some kind of follow-up. If not I would advise not starting the series in the first place.

19 people found this helpful