| Winterbirth | Contributor: Martin | Posted: 12/02/07 | 20:35 |
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page 3 of 3 This is aided by Ruckley’s prose, which efficiently moves the action along. Ruckley is unlikely to win the Booker Prize, but he is seemingly aware his talents lie in the direction of brisk story-telling and sketching swift outlines of people and places. He manages to resist the straining for effect and emotion that could betray his limitations, and his characters, while by no means complex, are well-drawn. There are no patches of prose to remember – for good or ill – in Winterbirth. At times the rapid pace strains credulity – Ruckley draws a picture of sensitive Orisian’s sadness at his grief-stricken father’s slow descent into a depressive madness that is at complete odds with his instantaneous recovery from grief over the eventual brutal murder of said father and the destruction of his home. This is however a common affliction in adventure stories, where the deaths of family and friends are more commonly used as plot devices and not opportunities for character development. The mark of good fantasy, (and all good fantasy takes a trilogy at the very least), is to leave the reader at the end of each novel anxious to read the next instalment of the action. And in that, Winterbirth succeeds: the next book, The Broken Man is eagerly awaited here at SFFR. two out of five
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