Apprentice comments on Lawrence Watt-Evans's Fiction - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 July 2008 03:00AM

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Comment author: Apprentice 07 November 2013 06:51:52PM 3 points [-]

I wouldn't say complete crap but the second arc (book 2) does have a bit of Wheel of Time syndrome. There are way too many characters and the plot slows to a crawl. By installment 80 the main character has worked out a plan to get to the big battle by jumping through a couple of portals. I thought this sounded great. Oh boy, I can't wait for this to happen. But wait I did. This bogged down in long, dull negotiations with a bunch of boring secondary characters we have no reason to care about. 67 installments later the main character comments appositely:

My "brilliance" can't get me through a goddamned door today.

Perhaps the authors had realized how frustrating this was at that point - but there were still to be 13 more installments before our guy actually gets through that goddamned door.

Still. There is a lot of good character development in there and many excellent (if plot-slowing) vignettes about duty, honor, sacrifice, loyalty and so on. I like that stuff enough to read on. But if you were in it for the plot and the metafiction, I can see how it wouldn't be worth your while to read on.