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aseOne of my friends got a kick out of this novel and lent it to me; she neglected to mention at the time that she read it during a long plane ride and derived a huge amount of enjoyment from ticking off the numerous cliches. As a result, I went in thinking Green Rider would be a lot better than the boilerplate Fat Fantasy Epic it turned out to be.
Mere secondhand description cannot convey how incredibly cliched this book is. Think Mercedes Lackey with a side of classic Jordan-esque Fat Fantasy Epic. Our Heroine, Karigan G'ladheon (and how do you pronounce that?) is unfairly kicked out of school after roundly beating a noble's bullying son in a mostly fair fight, runs off to plead her case to her father, and is pressed into delivering a mysterious message by a dying man. She inherits the man's mission, greatcoat, Mystical Brooch and horse, cannoning through nearly five hundred pages of cardboard villains, Ancient Magic, a noble and handsome king, service-oriented horse riders, and a bona fide Evil Overlord.
The Grey One - the abovementioned Overlord - is the reader's first tipoff that the writer might have a bit of growing to do. Chapter one opens with a section from his point of view, giving him his first opportunity to strut his Evil stuff. Paragraphs three and four on page one had me counting cliches and muttering, "whoa. Chew that scenery, why don't you."
Copied from the sample chapters available on Kristen Britain's website:
The wall had endured for a thousand years. It had been built after the Long War at the turn of the First Age. For a thousand years, the denizens of the dark forest had grown restless, had festered, trapped behind the wall.
Now the Gray One must call on them and end their exile. He would bring these nightmares back into the daylit world. He would bring them slowly. Slowly at first.
Quick cliche count: indomitable wall (not for long); an ancient and catastrophic war; division of history into Ages ("for the end of the Third Age was come..." "it was the dawn of the Third Age of mankind..." "the Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and go." Pick your epic, it involves Ages of humanity); darkness barred from human lands. Bonus points for hammering the important points into the ground through repetition, if your eyes were too glazed to pick up on them the first time around.
And this is just page one. I strongly suspect that the author hasn't read much of the Evil Overlord List or the excellent Tough Guide to Fantasyland.
The firey protagonist herself... well, at least she doesn't have some of Lackey's character's self-esteem "I am not worthy of this exhalted position of responsibility" issues. Her stubborn refusal to recognize her Destiny and join the elite Green Riders actually sticks through the entire first book, despite her repeated entanglements in Rider affairs, though it looks like she just may get thoroughly sucked in during the sequel, First Rider's Call.
The plotting is reasonably unremarkable; the book may be cliched, but it doesn't bog down too badly. The abuse of rotating points of view is pretty appalling, though. Karigan may have been the protagonist, but several villians, a ghostly Green Rider, at least one dying Rider and Karigan's father all get their moment in the tight-third limelight. This, as well as the repitition evident throughout the novel, probably helped bulk out the novel from a nice 200-300 pageturner to the 500 page doorstop on the shelves.
This is the first novel I have ever read where I had to restrain myself from picking up a pencil and crossing out repetitions, rewording stilted exchanges, and jotting MST3K comments in the margins. If it had been one of my books, not a loaner, nothing would have saved that poor book from my snarking pencil.
There's no question Kristen Britain has dedication; it takes a lot of effort to write, rewrite and market a novel. I hope she develops some skill in future novels to go along with that dedication.
Mere secondhand description cannot convey how incredibly cliched this book is. Think Mercedes Lackey with a side of classic Jordan-esque Fat Fantasy Epic. Our Heroine, Karigan G'ladheon (and how do you pronounce that?) is unfairly kicked out of school after roundly beating a noble's bullying son in a mostly fair fight, runs off to plead her case to her father, and is pressed into delivering a mysterious message by a dying man. She inherits the man's mission, greatcoat, Mystical Brooch and horse, cannoning through nearly five hundred pages of cardboard villains, Ancient Magic, a noble and handsome king, service-oriented horse riders, and a bona fide Evil Overlord.
The Grey One - the abovementioned Overlord - is the reader's first tipoff that the writer might have a bit of growing to do. Chapter one opens with a section from his point of view, giving him his first opportunity to strut his Evil stuff. Paragraphs three and four on page one had me counting cliches and muttering, "whoa. Chew that scenery, why don't you."
Copied from the sample chapters available on Kristen Britain's website:
The wall had endured for a thousand years. It had been built after the Long War at the turn of the First Age. For a thousand years, the denizens of the dark forest had grown restless, had festered, trapped behind the wall.
Now the Gray One must call on them and end their exile. He would bring these nightmares back into the daylit world. He would bring them slowly. Slowly at first.
Quick cliche count: indomitable wall (not for long); an ancient and catastrophic war; division of history into Ages ("for the end of the Third Age was come..." "it was the dawn of the Third Age of mankind..." "the Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and go." Pick your epic, it involves Ages of humanity); darkness barred from human lands. Bonus points for hammering the important points into the ground through repetition, if your eyes were too glazed to pick up on them the first time around.
And this is just page one. I strongly suspect that the author hasn't read much of the Evil Overlord List or the excellent Tough Guide to Fantasyland.
The firey protagonist herself... well, at least she doesn't have some of Lackey's character's self-esteem "I am not worthy of this exhalted position of responsibility" issues. Her stubborn refusal to recognize her Destiny and join the elite Green Riders actually sticks through the entire first book, despite her repeated entanglements in Rider affairs, though it looks like she just may get thoroughly sucked in during the sequel, First Rider's Call.
The plotting is reasonably unremarkable; the book may be cliched, but it doesn't bog down too badly. The abuse of rotating points of view is pretty appalling, though. Karigan may have been the protagonist, but several villians, a ghostly Green Rider, at least one dying Rider and Karigan's father all get their moment in the tight-third limelight. This, as well as the repitition evident throughout the novel, probably helped bulk out the novel from a nice 200-300 pageturner to the 500 page doorstop on the shelves.
This is the first novel I have ever read where I had to restrain myself from picking up a pencil and crossing out repetitions, rewording stilted exchanges, and jotting MST3K comments in the margins. If it had been one of my books, not a loaner, nothing would have saved that poor book from my snarking pencil.
There's no question Kristen Britain has dedication; it takes a lot of effort to write, rewrite and market a novel. I hope she develops some skill in future novels to go along with that dedication.
