Floridly written.
This book is very floridly written. It is an extremely old-fashioned sort of writing that writing teachers would sum up as "purple prose." I don't really hold with American creative writing schools and their toxic, boring "spare writing," but this book definitely qualifies as "purple prose," and could have been written for some monthly journal in the 1890s or whenever.
The writing and plot strike me as catnip for some 12-year-old Dungeons and Dragons fanboy of the 1970s or early 1980s. If you don't like super-mass-market 1970s science-fiction and fantasy, you should probably stay away.
The dialogue and action in this is so melodramatic. It basically writes itself.
This is my first book by Dennard, and it might have helped me to understand what is going on if I had read the previous books in the series, but even if you start with the first book, I think you would really have to bury yourself in the melodramatic dialogue and melodramatic, vast welter of plot and dream-it-up-as-you-go-along magic that acts to make things happen and move the plot along.
The writing and plot strike me as catnip for some 12-year-old Dungeons and Dragons fanboy of the 1970s or early 1980s. If you don't like super-mass-market 1970s science-fiction and fantasy, you should probably stay away.
The dialogue and action in this is so melodramatic. It basically writes itself.
This is my first book by Dennard, and it might have helped me to understand what is going on if I had read the previous books in the series, but even if you start with the first book, I think you would really have to bury yourself in the melodramatic dialogue and melodramatic, vast welter of plot and dream-it-up-as-you-go-along magic that acts to make things happen and move the plot along.