Available at Amazon, Kobo, Mondador, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Falls Ende: Courser*
Not Quite Sure What I Think About This Series Now
This is the second novella that I have read in this series, and I now find myself wondering if the author is making a mockery of medieval-inspired contemporary literature. Aspects of this book just didn’t ring wholly true for me as straight-up historical fiction. For one thing, in this book (and to a lesser extent the previous one) he has odd names for some characters. In this book, it was Master Mason Morel Mundy, and yes, he did always capitalize it like that. When referring to people by their job, he always capitalized it. The author also makes some odd word choices, causing me more than once to refer to my Kindle dictionary and the internet (which is kind of annoying in and of itself). Some words did not appear to be used correctly by definition or by culture; I wonder if the author is just using some of these words for effect.
Like the last book, there are some very long stretches of describing setting and other straight-up narrative prose, especially at the beginning of the book; you know an author has gone on too long if you’re tempted to just skip over large blocks of text. Some details were needed, but the author went overboard far too often. This slows down the action of the book. I thought there was too much head-hopping in the book; sometimes, the point-of-view character changed from paragraph to paragraph. Though really much isn’t said about it in the book blurb, much of this book is about Charlotte, Odo’s betrothed, and her plight; the book isn’t all about Odo, which seems to be implied by the book description. Her scenes alternated with the parts about Odo, who is showing himself to be much more than a simple herdsman. I actually quite enjoy historical fiction and so was looking forward to this series of novellas, especially as I had seen some good reviews, but I find myself disappointed because of the deficiencies above.
