A Crown Imperiled (The Chaoswar Saga #2)

I am going to get right to the point: Every book since the Serpent War series has been worse than the previous one before it. A Crown Imperiled is not a good book and if you are a true fan of Feist you shouldn’t be able to read this book without having glaring things jump out at you.

Again, since the Serpent War Saga and really it began with the 4th book of the serpent war saga, his writing is bland and predictable. He is also extremely inconsistent. Feist claims he just knows where the characters go and sits down and writes. He doesn’t keep too many notes because he knows all of the characters.

Well the further the series goes the more errors he is making and to hardcore readers, we live and breathe these characters. We notice these glaring mistakes that you just gloss over as “I don’t like keeping exact details”. Timelines matter when you span hundreds of years! I can’t count how many times I have spotted inconsistent ages for the characters over the course of the years these books have spanned. Spend 2 hours and create a timeline for yourself and look at it before starting a new series! Jeez, writing 101.

In one of these previous books, I don’t remember which, it is stated that Erik was never married and grew old without knowing what it was like. That is a huge mistake! Your main character from the serpent war saga and you can’t even remember what you wrote about him? Sometimes I wonder if you have hit the drinking later on your life and accelerated the memory loss. He married Kitty in the Serpent War Saga and was happily married for years.

You state in A Crown Imperiled, and I Quote: “Ah, could you perhaps make us invisible or something like that? asked Amirantha? Pug Smiled, “I could but you would have to remain motionless”. Really? Pug, the same Pug that in the Serpent War Saga was able to render himself Invisible and the Demon with him invisible as the flew over the skies of the old Saaur Planet? So now he can’t make people invisible if they move? This is the kind of inconsistent crap I am talking about. Your readers are not stupid, they remember the details.

I also can’t count how many times it talks about how Pug the God character of the series can do everything but can never master teleporting. However, in the early series there are plenty of times where it describes in detail him disappearing and teleporting without using a device. Not to mention that his wife, Miranda, was showing him how to do it almost a century ago! He was practicing this a century ago and still he is unable to master it? The greatest magician ever can’t figure this out? It is even stated, magic is all one thing. There is really no magic, just the ability to manipulate the stuff. He doesn’t have to be a Travel Mage to have the ability to use this spell. Let me tell you why you see this inconsistently brought up in the series. REF uses this as one of Pug’s Kryptonite. REF realizes early on that he built a God character, something that in the literary world you don’t want to do. You end up writing yourself in a corner with that character if you make them too powerful. So after Pug has been teleporting around, he decides to implement this restriction. It is a weak ass restriction and we all know it and it is increasingly pathetic when you still talk about this weakness 1 century and several series later. Are we supposed to believe the greatest mage and scholar hasn’t sought to fix this weakness? He is capable of doing it, following the rules of magic you made for your books. So why hasn’t he? Weak writing is why.

One more thing about Pug the great and mighty, his power levels over the years/series/books have always been inconsistent. One moment people are in awe of him and he can “LEVEL MOUNTAINS”. Yet in other books he can’t keep a shield up that long against the Sauur’s shooting arrows at him (Book 4 Serpent War Saga) because it is weakening him. Even this book goes in detail with him fighting some demon army at the beginning of the book. He goes through his VERY TYPICAL descriptions of casting something “White Hot” and “Waves of this and that” as he drops 1 to 10 of the demons at once. This worked for me when I was a Teenager back in the early 90s. Hell it still worked in the late 90s but it doesn’t WORK ANYMORE. You need to get more diversified with your magic. You use the same descriptions almost every time when it comes to Magus, Pug, and Miranda. In fact any 3 of them you can substitute their names for each other during fight scenes and not miss a beat. Back to his power level though. Let me give you one example I am referring too. In Rage of a Demon King he creates a gigantic fireball that is described as being the size of the entire ship the emerald queen is on. That is one giant fireball. So fast forward now and you have a demon army on one side and no one else around “yet”. Why can’t you use something more whole scale destructive? Maybe not a massive fireball that will burn your friends but maybe, well, a sink hole? A Wall of Ice, Thousands of Fire Darts? I don’t know, use your imagination, you’re a freaking writer for Sarig’s sake! Again I can tell you why… Writers block with Pug. He created this ultra-powerful god like character and really didn’t know how to handle him after that. How do you give him weaknesses, post development that don’t seem contrived and make the readers laugh at you? He couldn’t do it, unfortunately.

Now as if this review isn’t going to be long enough already, I want to talk about his normal cast of characters. I read multiple reviews of people saying this is a good story or a great story! Are you guys new to the Fantasy Genre? Are you new to Feist? That is the only way I can imagine you calling this or any of his books since Rage of a Demon King, good. Grant it, I did like the book Talon of the Silver Hawk but that was the only one after Rage of a Demon King.

REF uses about 6 different character cutout profiles for all of his characters. They are cookie cutter characters that he re-hashes in every new series. It makes reading his books a chore! In this series you have 3 brothers from Crydee, Hal, Martin, and Brandon. Really using the name Martin again? Come on just change the name at least. Martin is the name sake of Martin Condoin from the Riftwar Saga but, hold your breath for this craziness, he is actually filling the role of Arutha. This is my point exactly. This could be Arutha or Martin’s first son, or Guy Du Bas-Tyra, or Erik, Calis, The Dog Of Krondor, or any other military leader in his books. All of his characters are from the same mold with different names and backgrounds but they write the same, sound the same, think the same! This review is already too long but I could create a spreadsheet of all the main POV Characters in all of his books and draw multiple similarities to all of them. The one character that doesn’t seem to have anyone like him in all the books is Nakor and oddly enough the god of Luck that is talked about a lot in his last 3 series, does seem to have similarities with Nakor.

REF is the only writer that I read now that when I read his books, it takes me literally 1 night to read them sometimes 2 and I cannot remember anything about the book a year later when his new novel comes out. Again, everything since Book 4 of Serpent War Saga has been one long, badly written, fantasy series. I am ready for him to finish. I am ready to find out what happens to Pug. I have continued buying the Hardback for every book in his series just to skim through the re-hashed crap to find out what happens to Pug.
I am hoping REF takes a LONG break, revisits himself as an author, and comes up with some new material. Material from his heart and something he would want to read. Not these books he puts out every year at the same time just to keep the cash flow coming.

-Long Time Reader, Long Time Fan, Finally setting it straight and not pulling any punches.

I cant help but think that Feist is phoning this one in. As a conclusion to the Rift War saga its logical that it reflects some of the beginnings of the Rift War series, but there doesnt seem to be much original plot. Instead, its an escalated repeat of previous plots. The characters are also pretty predictable, lower class noble falling for the beautiful although unattainable princess and several more predictable tropes.

All that said, I fell in love with these characters back in the Magician: Apprentice / Master books and still like them. This is made handier since most of the characters are essentially reflections of those former characters.

And I have to ask, was there no editor on this book? The typos and errors were quite distracting. Examples like using moat instead of mote and yes instead of yet. I expect a great deal more for a writer of this caliber.

The other reviews have more than adequately covered the errors. It’s hard to imagine that anyone proofread this book. Anyone posing as an editor for this volume should apologize to Feist, apologize to his readers, and return any pay that they received for the job.

But it’s not that bad. You can understand what Feist is saying at all times from the context. It just looks like a draft copy from time to time. Aside from switching two characters in a particular setting and momentarily confusing the identity of another, the errors do not affect the story. If this is your first time reading Feist, don’t start with this volume. You’ll be confused for reasons other than the errors. If you are up-to-speed on the Riftwar Cycle, these errors will annoy you but they won’t change the story.

And it is a very good story. I’ve read every published book in the cycle. Nothing will compare to the early volumes. There were some lows and then there were some highs. And then we about hit rock bottom with The Demonwar Saga. But the Chaoswar Saga had a good first volume. And this book is a worthy second volume. It’s a page-turner. You really want to see what happens next. The various stories flow well and produce that sense of intrigue that Feist’s best work does so well. I’m a fanatic and I’ve been letdown before. This book is not a letdown. I really like it.

Be forewarned (as other reviews have noted), this book sets up Magician’s End and you will not be particularly satisfied with the ending without keeping this in mind. We won’t know until the final volume, but I think that some of the reviewers here are blowing the events at the end out of proportion. I anticipate that a great deal will be revealed soon.

I can’t wait. But please, Mr. Feist, light a fire under someone at Harper Voyager and make them do their jobs. This is not how a publishing company survives in the age of electronic books and self-publishing. You surely have enough clout to make it happen. I’m sad to see the Riftwar Cycle ending, but there are plenty of new fantasy writers that deserve a proper editor. Goodness knows they take a big enough cut of your revenue.

I followed up reading the first in the series immediately with this in the hardback edition because it was much cheaper second hand. Again, there is no map at the front. The story is gripping and picks up pace from the first book which was more of an introduction. Perhaps it is a feature of first edition hardbacks but I have never read a book with so many proof reading errors. There are words missed out, others which sound a bit like the word that should have been there and others just plain wrong. It does somewhat spoil your immersion into the tale if you have to mentally correct the writing every few minutes. At one point the wrong character name was given. I would have been a bit annoyed if I had forked out the full hardback price. So I would recommend this as an enjoyable continuation is the series but buy a paperback later edition which I hope has the grammatical errors corrected.

Must admit I enjoyed the book, some old friends back. Not his best but not his worse, I often find that the books I’ve found weaker (with a noticeable exception or two) are reinforced by the books that come after. Normally I’d give this one 4 stars but….. well, as has been said there are some bad errors in this edition. Which did make me wonder about my concentration level and had to flip back a few chapters to make sure I was not going dafter than usual. For a change I was not.

It is still an enjoyable Feist romp, I think I can work out what the story was meant to be with the swapping of the characters. It did not detract too much for me and TBH I’ve become quite adept at working out/ ignoring errors in the books over the last few years. I agree that the continuity errors should not have slipped and do wonder if it would be better for a few Feist fans to be used as proof readers.
So to save further waffle, for me its good and as for the errors in this edition, who would not want a copy of the adulterers Bible in their book collection?

Good and enjoyable but would be better if it was the final story as intended thus the middling rating.

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member