Black Sun Rising by C. S. Friedman

[lightreads]

Black Sun Rising: The Coldfire Trilogy #1 by C.S. Friedman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Sorry, sorry, I know this is beloved of the hive mind, but after reading it, I’m kind of giving the hive mind a bit of the side-eye. Because not to judge – no, cancel that, no one will believe it anyway. I totally judge, and my judgment says obnoxiously purple prose, clumsy pacing, that kind of book that thinks it’s deep and morally ambiguous to write about evil people being forced to help out the white hats, when actually it’s just emo. Also, way to completely fail to use all the potential inherent in this notion of a planet whose energies respond to human emotion with everything from monsters to fast-tracked native evolution. Why couldn’t I have read about that, instead of this endless bland quest?



This gets better, right? Right?





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Comments

[yunitsa]

This gets better, right? Right?

Not really? I actually found the second one even more frustrating, since it leaves this underdeveloped setting for a whole new underdeveloped continent, and then there's another boring quest (actually, my review at the time more or less sums it up). The third one is just marginally more compelling, but yeah, these...are not good. And yet, as soon as I'd finished, I somehow wanted to write fic for them, even if I still haven't got around to it. Maybe that explains it?

[vito_excalibur]

No!

I vaguely liked them when I was 16, and the idea of the notion of a planet where stuff is what you believe it is still vaguely lives in my head and appalls and horrifies me from time to time, but I just don't give a shit about her Stupid Sexy Vampire.

[lightreads]

...oh. convincing me to go on, that is not.

Ah well. There are other books in the sea.

[lightreads]

but I just don't give a shit about her Stupid Sexy Vampire..

Oh, word.

[eagle]

(Here via /network.) I can't tell you about how they improve for the rest of the series since I carefully waited until I had all three available, read the first one, went "meh," and sold all three back to the used book store.

I occasionally like grim, but not that sort of grim, and I failed to care about any of the characters. So you're not alone.

[lightreads]

Right, exactly, I waited for years until they were all three available from my usual audio source. And then....no.