King's Dragon, Prince of Dogs, The Burning Stone

The Burning Stone by Kate Elliott


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Epic fantasy, emphasis on the epic. Young orphan with a magical legacy, lost Count's heir, King's bastard, inhuman enemies, glorious battles, coming magical calamity foretold in the stars, you know the sort of thing.

I read the first three volumes of seven, but now I think I'm done with this for a long time. I'd heard vaguely about this series before, but I was a bit puzzled – why didn't people rave about 5000 pages of generally well-written, intricately plotted high fantasy? When speaking of the genre, people mention these books, but they're usually halfway down the list of recs. And I think that's exactly right. They are mostly well-written, and the breadth allows a lot of world-building, and there are interesting gender politics. But between flickers of 'oooh,' I stayed just interested enough to keep reading, until I got tired of skimming through characters I don't care about for OMG hundreds of pages to get back to the few threads of genuine interest. (Though to be fair, it's partly that I'm absolutely the wrong audience for all the piles and piles of religion).

It's like all the pieces are there – vast scale, precise work on a very long plot arc, mystery, romance, battles. And yet? Eh. Midlist.

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