Rides a Dread Legion (The Demonwar Saga #1)

With Feist’s mix of normal lifespan, extended lifespan, and effectively immortal characters, it takes a while to figure out hen and where this one starts. I spent most of the first two chapters wondering fi this was going to be an entirely new set of characters, then we started encountering the sons and grandsons of earlier characters. If it’s been a while since you’ve read the earlier books, you may have trouble remembering who the players are supposed to be, but eventually you make your way to Crydee, Jimmy the Hand’s descendents get involved, Pug and Tomas show up, and it starts to feel more familiar. As seems to be the standard for a new Midkemia series, you develop a good feel for where this one is going, but it takes forever to get any speed going. Near the end you have the obligatory hallmarks of a first volume Midkemia book – Oh look, it’s worse than we thought, there are layers of villain manipulating the ones we’ve seen so far, something out of Pug’s (or Tomas’, or one of the elves, or all of the above) past, and a secondary character close to a main character dies in a mostly pointless way to remind everyone that this world is dangerous and to provide some heroic angst. But, in spite of being as predictable at this point as an Anita Blake novel it’s still a fun read, and Feist slips in some very good turns of phrase and character interplay.

Feist returns to Midkemia with a tried and true formula, and I think it still works. While not as fresh as in the Riftwar saga, he’s back with some of the edge, confusion, and swirling action that categorized his earlier writing. It reads quickly and ends too fast.

(** minor spoilers **)
It does get a little old to have yet another Threat-to-End-All-Threats bearing down on poor Midkemia, another evil mastermind, another unknown enclave of Elves, and so forth, but Feist continues weaving these new/repeated elements into the tapestry of his overall story. Sometimes the links are only tenuous, but he has done a reasonable job with consistency across his many series. Also, he kills two significant recent characters in this book.
(** end spoilers **)

New readers should begin farther back, at least with the Darkwar saga, if not at the very beginning.

Highly recommended for Feist fans, he is still a good read.

This book has no shortage of faults, to be sure. Many of the characters are uncompelling. The author also appears to have a habit of adding unnecessary fights in the background of dialogue, especially when characters are introducing themselves to one another or the reader. There is a random sprinkling of extreme cliche, although the writing overall is pretty strong. There is also a minor mismatch between the dark, epic setting of the book and the positive attitudes and friendly interactions between characters.

Nonetheless, the plot moves along at a good pace and the setting is interesting. There are a handful of genuine surprises tucked away in the storyline. The author also showcases a very detailed and fairly consistent scheme for the the workings of magic, demons, etc., something that is missing from other sword and sorcery universes.

This is one of the better free offerings for the kindle, and I’ll definitely be watching to see if the library gets ahold of the sequel. The book is worth a solid 3 stars, but I rounded it up one on account of the $0 price tag. It’s not the sort of book one gets extremely enthusiastic about, but it’s an absolutely perfect fit if you’re looking for a way to spend an afternoon.

would work well as a short story. some of the characters had potential but most of them were forgettable…as were most of their names (which I could not remember since they had to be at least 4 syllables) and there was far too much written about cities, countries and other worlds and their political crap that didn’t really do anything to add to this story except extend it out hundreds of more pages than it should have been. I don’t really like the “tell each diff. character’s story in each chapter” because if you are really enjoying one character (the female knight’s was good) its aggravating to have to read about others that aren’t as good.

As soon as the “biggest threat ever” is vanquished, Feist’s next series introduces a bigger threat. This is part of his formula, and his ultra-powerful protagonists struggle mightily before winning the day, while the world around them is slowly wrecked.

In this book, Feist takes a very long time to set up his pieces on the board and introduces the massive danger that is so bad it is destroying the newly introduced race of super-elves.

While the reading is good, it does take a long time to set up, without much of the action I’ve come to expect.

Which is why the ending seems so strong and shocking. There is a twist which I didn’t see coming, and a reminder that the reader shouldn’t rely on the preconceptions which might be brought from earlier Feist novels.

My review is 3.5 stars, boosted up by the better than expected close to the story. In fact, I think the ending is the only thing that salvaged a book which sort of dragged.

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