Review: SHAMAN'S CROSSING

Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb
Book 1 of the Soldier Son trilogy
Read by John Keating
Genre: fantasy
Format: audiobook

About Shaman's Crossing:

Nevare Burvelle was destined from birth to be a soldier. The second son of a newly anointed nobleman, he must endure the rigors of military training at the elite King's Cavalla Academy--and survive the hatred, cruelty, and derision of his aristocratic classmates--before joining the King of Gernia's brutal campaign of territorial expansion. The life chosen for him will be fraught with hardship, for he must ultimately face a forest-dwelling folk who will not submit easily to a king's tyranny. And they possess an ancient magic their would-be conquerors have long discounted--a powerful sorcery that threatens to claim Nevare Burvelle's soul and devastate his world once the Dark Evening brings the carnival to Old Thares.

Source: Info in the About Shaman's Crossing was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45110.Shaman_s_Crossing on 10/02/2012.

[Image Credit: John Howe]

Review:

The narrator is quite talented. I like the way the narrator change his voice and accent to suit the character in the story. But I could tell when he gets tired. There was a distinct change in the quality of his voice, a slight slurring to the words. But I do not blame him. This is the longest audiobook I'd ever listened to. 21 CDs or 25 hours worth of listening, so it took me sometime to get through it all. Having said that, I have to say that this author has a tendency to be long winding and this is an unabridged audiobook. It's not just the detailed descriptions, but the author has a long winding way of getting to a point. It is also so much narration but not much happening. Maybe this is her way of stringing out the suspense or something, but it's not working out. In fact it's discouraging me to read further on in this series even though I already have the hardback edition of the second book, Forest Mage. In printed format, I imagine that the pace of this book would not be quick at all.

Character development. I find Epiny spoiled brat and irritating! And she is suppose to be one of our team of protagonists. I can't quite decide whether Nevare is such a dimwit, spineless or just the author's idea of being male. This main protagonist (Nevare) is a weak character who is too stupid to live (TSTL) and survive only through sheer dumb luck. However I like Spinks. Flawed but true. So not everybody in this book is TSTL. It's just that the side characters seems to be better developed than the main characters. WTF!

The world building though is fabulous! I like the world of Nevare. I like it's magic and contrasts. It's beautiful! It's realism makes it very easy to immerse in. I think this is the best aspect about this book!

At the end of it, I enjoyed this book, but I would probably prefer the second book to be another audiobook rather than read a long winding hardback. So Forest Mage will probably sit in my TBR shelf for sometime yet.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 3.5
Character development = 3
Story itself = 2.5
Ending = 3
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 4
Pace = N/A (25 hours listening time)
Plot = 3
Narrator = 4

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 cherries


Other Books In The Soldier Son trilogy:


Thank you to the RCT Library for letting me borrow this audiobook!!

FTC Disclosure:
This audiobook was borrowed from the library. No money received for this review.

WW28: THE DRAGON KEEPER

WW28
A chance to showcase your favourite!

• First you grab our Wicked Wednesday pic.
• Then you grab a book. Turn to page 28. Take the first sentence. And then you post it in your site with a link back to WW28.
• Come back to Cherry Mischievous - WW28 and give us the url of your post (in a comment at a WW28 post) so that other WW28 readers can find your WW28 offering.

WW28 book offering : The Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb
Page 28, 1st Sentence:

Luck brought Thymara to the right place and the right time.

...Ahh... there is more to the story than that :)
... was it really luck?

About The Dragon Keeper:
Book 1 of the Rain Wild Chronicles

For years, the Trader cities valiantly battled their enemies, the Chalcedeans. But they could not have staved off invasion without the powerful dragon Tintaglia. In return, the Traders promised to help her serpents migrate up the Rain Wild River after a long exile at sea—to find a safe haven and, Tintaglia hopes, to restore her species. But too much time has passed, and the newly hatched dragons are damaged and weak, and many die. The few who survive cannot use their wings; earthbound, they are powerless to hunt and vulnerable to human predators willing to kill them for the fabled healing powers of dragon flesh.

But Tintaglia has vanished and the Traders are weary of the labor and expense of tending useless dragons. The Trader leadership fears that if it stops providing for the young dragons, the hungry and neglected creatures will rampage—or die along the river’s acidic muddy banks. To avert catastrophe, the dragons decree a move even farther up the treacherous river to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragons’ uncertain ancestral memories.

To ensure their safe passage, the Traders recruit a disparate group of young people to care for the damaged creatures and escort them to their new home. Among them is Thymara, an unschooled forest girl of sixteen, and Alise, a wealthy Trader’s wife trapped in a loveless marriage, who attaches herself to the expedition as a dragon expert. The two women share a deep kinship with the dragons: Thymara can instinctively communicate with them, and Alise, captivated by their beauty and majesty, has devoted her life to studying them.

Source: Info in the About The Dragon Keeper was taken from the author's website at http://robinhobb.com/novels/dragon-keeper/ on 26/08/2010.

IN THE MAIL: THE DRAGON KEEPER, BLACK DUST MAMBO & HEADLINE BOOKS

I got a dragon, a witch and a boatload of books in the mail this week :)

I would like to thank Voyager for the free copy of The Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb. I think I might have won this book from an online contest but couldn't trace it from where anymore. So if that was you, THANK YOU!

The Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb
Book 1 of the Rain Wild Chronicles

About The Dragon Keeper:

For years, the Trader cities valiantly battled their enemies, the Chalcedeans. But they could not have staved off invasion without the powerful dragon Tintaglia. In return, the Traders promised to help her serpents migrate up the Rain Wild River after a long exile at sea—to find a safe haven and, Tintaglia hopes, to restore her species. But too much time has passed, and the newly hatched dragons are damaged and weak, and many die. The few who survive cannot use their wings; earthbound, they are powerless to hunt and vulnerable to human predators willing to kill them for the fabled healing powers of dragon flesh.

But Tintaglia has vanished and the Traders are weary of the labor and expense of tending useless dragons. The Trader leadership fears that if it stops providing for the young dragons, the hungry and neglected creatures will rampage—or die along the river’s acidic muddy banks. To avert catastrophe, the dragons decree a move even farther up the treacherous river to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragons’ uncertain ancestral memories.

To ensure their safe passage, the Traders recruit a disparate group of young people to care for the damaged creatures and escort them to their new home. Among them is Thymara, an unschooled forest girl of sixteen, and Alise, a wealthy Trader’s wife trapped in a loveless marriage, who attaches herself to the expedition as a dragon expert. The two women share a deep kinship with the dragons: Thymara can instinctively communicate with them, and Alise, captivated by their beauty and majesty, has devoted her life to studying them.

Source: Info in the About The Dragon Keeper was taken from the author's website at http://robinhobb.com/novels/dragon-keeper/ on 27/08/2010.


I would like to thank Jeanette over at Today & Everyday for hosting a contest which made it possbile for me to win a copy of Black Dust Mambo by Adrian Phoenix!

Black Dust Mambo by Adrian Phoenix

About Black Dust Mambo

There will be times, girl, when all your magic ain't going to be enough, times when it will seem to dry up like mud under the noonday sun, or even make matters worse . . ."

Kallie Riviere, a fiery Cajun hoodoo apprentice with a talent for trouble, finds herself smack-dab in the middle of one of those times her mentor warned her about when she visits New Orleans to attend the Hecatean Alliance's annual carnival: her hard-bodied conjurer hookup ends up dead in her blood-drenched bed. And he was killed by something that Kallie would never dream of touching -- the darkest of dark juju, soul-eating juju -- a black dust hex that may have been meant to kill her.

Now Kallie has to use every bit of hoodoo knowledge and bayou-bred mojo she possesses to clear her own name and find the killer -- even as that dark sorcerer hunts Kallie and her friends. But Kallie's search for the truth soon leads her in a direction she never anticipated -- back home to Bayou Cypres Noir, and to Gabrielle LaRue, Kallie's aunt, protector, and hoodoo mentor . . . who is looking more and more like she just might be the one who wants Kallie dead.

Source: Info in the About Black Dust Mambo was taken from the author's website at http://adrianphoenix.com/mambo.html on 08/05/2010.

I would like to thank Book Chick City for hosting a contest which made it possible for me to win a boatload of books from Headline!!