Novels of the Rigante: Sword in the Storm, Midnight Falcon, Stormrider, and Ravenheart.

I don’t know how I managed to not have read any David Gemmell before this, considering how much time I have spent lurking in the sci fi/fantasy aisles of every bookstore I’ve ever been to, but I picked the first of these after reading about them on Beth Schaefermann’s site. She doesn’t keep archives posted but I can tell you that the post was titled “Total Bad-Ass Warrior Who Wields Really Big Swords” and does that not tell you everything you need to know? You read these books and you feel the potential in you, the warrior you would be did you live in a medieval-esque fantasy world where you were handed a sword and maybe a legend or two about your ancestors and a story about your soul name and then sent off into the world to make your way.

I didn’t like book 2 as much as the rest (the main character takes a while to value himself), and–just as a completely random FYI–books 3 and 4 are more cohesive in time than the others. I just could not stop reading these and guess what? There’s tons of other Gemmell books/series out there!! The Drenai Saga alone has 12 books in it.

There’s just so much glorious reading ahead.

You may remember, I’m a bit of a huge Larbalestier fan. I loved her Magic or Madness trilogy and then I superextracrazytimes loved her last book Liar.

“Liar” was different than what came before it, and this book is even moreso. Far more lighthearted and silly (not in a bad way). I wondered if it was intended for younger readers than the others (I was thinking of looking up all their Lexile levels and comparing, heh) or just a different mindset.

Enjoyable, but lighter.

This book is extremely overhyped, in my opinion. The writing is decent and I can see how it would work as a good teaching tool in a middle school classroom. But I was certainly led to expect more, not only from the back cover’s claim to be “the surival story with which all others are compared.” Yeah–no.

Here’s the thing: fictional stories of survival almost never compare to the much (MUCH) crazier true survival stories out there. Maybe I’ve read too many of those to be that impressed by this. Or maybe this isn’t the survival story by which to compare all others.

I expect the Twilight crowd will eat this right up. But I was pretty disappointed, not just in the writing overall but in how much it echos that mythology. If Edward was a regular boy, he’d be Xavier; if Bella were an angel (and she is treated as if she is, in many ways, in that series), she’d be Bethany. Their dynamic as a couple is strikingly similar. She’s incredibly passive, he’s bizarrely protective/obsessed. At least the third axle doesn’t turn out to be a Jacob copy.

Some of the wing imagery is pretty cool but that’s not enough to make it worthwhile.