Lord of the Isles by David Drake

One of the perks of working in a book store is browsing the books when it's near closing time and/or no customers are in the store. For me, thats the fantasy section and the history section (and somewhat the general fiction section).

I came across this book while browsing the fantasy section, and what caught me was a small little quote of a review from another author:

"An epic, with rousing action and characters to cheer for"
~ Terry Goodkind.

Thats right, an author who is a master at character creation and development is praising the characters of this book. The $8.99 price (with my 30% discount ) sealed the deal.

So far I'm about 11 chapters in and I'm starting to get into it. There are A LOT of characters so far, but I'm starting to get the gist of them all. Already I've been sucked in by some mysterious happenings and dramatic questions left unanswered (so far).

More to come as I read more

It is always fun when you find a new book to read that you enjoy!

I have that book somewhere, but I was bored with the first few chapters. I might pick it up again just to see if I can get into it. It's been several years.

The first two or three were kind of boring, but they were also really short if I remember. I thought it picked up after that, but thats just me

Hmm, I might just buy this, even if it takes me a while before I get around to reading it. I currently have eleven books on my shelf waiting to be read.

Well I finished it last night. It was a quite interesting read, and the characters lived up to the hype of Terry's promotion on the cover for the most part. It wasn't on the level of the Wheel of Time or Sword of Truth series, but considering those are two of the best fantasy series of all time thats not a knock against it.

The magic in the series has potential, but so far has yet to get much of any explanation as to how it works.

There is quite a bit of action, though at times it seems overdone. Every few chapters of the two (and halfway through the book, three) main storylines going on has some dramatic... something. Some characters have to be rescued more than once.

I'd give it a 7.5/10. Entertaining, and overall good enough for me to want to look into the next books of the series.

A good review Calwyn.