[LMB] [spoilers] I received it, I read it, I shelved it.

[Martin Gill]

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Legacy arrived this morning... and I finished it on one sitting. This
owes less unfortunately to how good it is and more to how short it is.

I was disappointed with the book. The prose was good and although I
won't deny I enjoyed the read, I'd still consider the experience
mediocre. The biggest problem I have is that that the book doesn't
really tell a story; it's all middle.

There's no beginning and there's no ending and above all there's no
real progress. Dag and Fawn arrive with nothing... mess around for a
few chapters and leave with nothing (less actually, they don't even
have the special knife any more). Nothing gets resolved, more problems
get added and generally I felt I was reading a Robert Jordan book, and
not an LMB one.

Dag and Fawn arrive, they are expelled from the family, except for
some rogue members. Fawn goes through existential angst while Dag
dithers. Dag runs away to fight a malice, fawn runs away after Dag,
they come back to have the the entire camp turn on them and their
family rob them blind and then they run away together. The most anyone
will do for them is have a quick whip round as you do for the
departing office worker so they can hand them an envelope with some
coins.

The council meeting is where for me the story really should have
started, it would have made a perfect place to get some really
interesting character development and story development in. The
patrollers should have sided with Dag and opposed the council, a nice
constitutional crisis with Dag at the centre. Everyone running around
like headless chickens trying to save their society while also having
to adopt to the new situation and in the middle of that a bunch of
farmers have decided to form a militia of a few thousand men and hunt
down the evil child-eating lakewalkers.

Maybe I'm just too big a fan of Miles. He'd have started ratcheting up
the pressure, digging away at council and by the end he'd have been
dictating terms to them; Dag just surrendered and ran away and that
doesn't sit well with me. It seems the only time he's not a coward is
when he's facing malice and there's some indication that until
recently that was simply because we was too afraid of living, yet
another form of cowardice. Fawn says it herself at one point that the
one thing she's really good at is running away, and she promptly does
it again.

Finally I felt that I was being ripped off. The two TSK books were
both short and both expensive, since I bought them as hardbacks based
on my own past experience of Lois' excellent writing. I don't know why
the decision was made to sell the books this way (I think I read it
was the publishers decision) but I'm voting with my feet and my wallet
and I won't be buying the next one as hardback, I might not buy it at
all, if its mostly just "middle" again. Maybe I'll wait until the
anthology comes out and I can actually read a coherent story instead
of being drip fed half an act every 6 months for the price of a 3 act
story.

I suspect I might upset some people with my comments but the simple
truth is that it's upset me as well. I remember the amazing high I had
when I finished ACC, to the point that I immediately started reading
it again. When I finish reading a book and all I can think is "is that
it?!" then something is wrong.

Actually... i think I'll go read ACC again right now... I need cheering up.

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Regards,

  Martin

-- 
Homepage: http://www.martinsgill.co.uk
         Blog: http://blog.martinsgill.co.uk
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"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
 - Titus Lucretius Carus (Roman Poet), De Rerum Natura