Return to Eddarta

Like the preceding volume, this is a straight ‘OK'. It takes us quite pleasantly and competently through the steadily unwinding plot, without providing any scenes that I find compelling. I read it just to find out what happens next.

It's instructive but mystifying to see that an author can write this fluently and competently and yet produce a novel that lacks fizz and doesn't engage my enthusiasm. Some other authors may not seem to write any better, but they succeed in writing scenes that I positively enjoy reading and want to return to again and again.

The plot is well contrived in that it goes along through seven volumes at a fairly brisk pace, always coming up with some new twist and turn; and it all seems to fit together so well that I think the whole series must have been sketched out in advance, before the detailed writing began.