Nolyn

DNF - PG 41

Why?

Meh.

Partially because I've had this book borrowed from the library for almost six weeks now, and I started it almost twenty days ago, and still haven't made it further than page 40.

But...Look, I loved this author's Riyria books, and people will probably say that his craft has improved over the years - but over the years, his books have lost what made me love them in the first place. There is no more snappy dialogue, there's too much bouncing back and forth between different stories (that, only hopefully, will meet up in the end) and, possibly the worst of the lot, there is too much extraneous description.

That was a large reason why I got so attached to Riyria (besides Royce and Hadrian, to be fair). I loved how it was to the point, how that was a castle because everyone knows what a castle is, how these are kings and queens because everyone knows what they are. This book is so densely packed with ‘unique' world building and text walls about irrelevant things (do we really need to know that Nolyn doesn't really understand how elephants are seen as ‘normal'?) that by page 40, my eyes were already glazing over.

I had hoped that this would be better than the First Empire series, and it honestly might be, but I also have no desire to keep reading when I am not enjoying what I have read and have no author trust left to give. (Also, I'd take the the ‘you can start with any series' idea with a grain of sand, because I only read the first two books of The Legend of the First Empire series and I feel like I'm missing something and am getting put out with all the callbacks, at turns.)