Book review: Sword of the Deceiver
May. 27th, 2008 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tigertoyThe last book on the stack is Sword of the Deceiver by Sarah Zettel.
The cover says this is "a novel of Isavalta" and it takes place in the same universe, but no Isavaltans are actually mentioned. It seems to be pretty self-contained and doesn't require reading the previous Isavalta books.
This is another book that had been sitting on the shelf for a long time; in this case, because the previous Isavalta books, though good, were very long and difficult to get through, and I've kept putting off reading a book that I feared would take me weeks to get through. This one isn't so chewy. I did spend pretty much all day yesterday reading, but I got through most of it and finished it today. It's a good, exciting story of intrigue, as long as you can deal with actual gods directly and significantly intervening in mortal affairs. It also has a fairly interesting approach to magic, although we don't get exposed to as much discussion of how magic works as we did in the first couple of Isavalta books. And it's a fairly satisfying story of how real people can become corrupted and become villains, and of betrayal and commitment. It's a good read, but I don't think it reaches great. So 8 out of 10. (I am concerned that I'm giving that rating to an awful lot of books these days.)
Bleah. If I write a plot summary I'll be late to bed, so it needs to be skipped.
The cover says this is "a novel of Isavalta" and it takes place in the same universe, but no Isavaltans are actually mentioned. It seems to be pretty self-contained and doesn't require reading the previous Isavalta books.
This is another book that had been sitting on the shelf for a long time; in this case, because the previous Isavalta books, though good, were very long and difficult to get through, and I've kept putting off reading a book that I feared would take me weeks to get through. This one isn't so chewy. I did spend pretty much all day yesterday reading, but I got through most of it and finished it today. It's a good, exciting story of intrigue, as long as you can deal with actual gods directly and significantly intervening in mortal affairs. It also has a fairly interesting approach to magic, although we don't get exposed to as much discussion of how magic works as we did in the first couple of Isavalta books. And it's a fairly satisfying story of how real people can become corrupted and become villains, and of betrayal and commitment. It's a good read, but I don't think it reaches great. So 8 out of 10. (I am concerned that I'm giving that rating to an awful lot of books these days.)
Bleah. If I write a plot summary I'll be late to bed, so it needs to be skipped.