A friend told me about Paul Kearney's The Mark of Ran, so I checked out the Publishers Weekly review for it. They had me at "fantasy swashbuckler."The rest of the description in the review isn't quite as compelling because it sounds like Kearney's world is overly magical. I like just a teensy bit of magic in fantasy stories, otherwise the magic becomes mundane; just a substitute for technology. One of the great things about The Lord of the Rings is that not everyone went around casting spells. Magic was special. The description of The Mark of Ran talks about witchcraft, magical gods, magical races, and a magical sword. That's a lot of magic for a one-paragraph review.
But then, it also talks about "the creak of ship's timbers and the flash of live steel," so I'm at least going to give it a chance to pass the 100-Page Rule.
No comments:
Post a Comment