March Book Study: Servant of the Underworld

Just got my copy as well. I won't be able to start reading right away, but I'm just glad to be able to participate in another one of these.

Finished the book last night.

I was overwhelmed by the characters. In one way, they are quite well-done with the regalia and the way they are described, on the other... I had a hard time remembering/keeping track of who they were "as people" (their goals, personalities). But that didn't keep me from enjoying it, in fact I dare say this made it easier for the plot twists to keep surprising me.

I read the Kindle version and I'm really disappointed by how poor the formatting was. All the way through. Missing punctuation and spaces, random line breaks, blank pages in strange places, and odd justifications. I guess what surprised me here was that AR seems like they have their stuff together, so a badly-formatted book from this publisher was an eye-boggle.

Back to the story: The "what really happened to those murdered people" was awesome. Enjoyed that twist!

As a whole, I enjoyed this book and I plan to pursue the next two in the trilogy. The combination of mystery elements and the setting kept things interesting throughout and I found the unapologetically high magic world refreshing.

The dialogue frequently felt too informal to me, though, and I wasn't a fan of the lengthy incantations. I'm also not sure how I feel about the protagonist's character arc overall - it didn't really work for me, but he was fine as a vehicle for the story.

I wouldn't mind if more books had notes like that at the end. I always like them for novels set in real time periods and I appreciated the information about the development of the novel as well.

blrude said:

I read the Kindle version and I'm really disappointed by how poor the formatting was. All the way through. Missing punctuation and spaces, random line breaks, blank pages in strange places, and odd justifications. I guess what surprised me here was that AR seems like they have their stuff together, so a badly-formatted book from this publisher was an eye-boggle.

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Huh. I read it on Kindle for PC and mine was formatted fine.

Ian Isaro said:

Huh. I read it on Kindle for PC and mine was formatted fine.

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You know? I'm kind of an idiot. I um, was talking about the second book in the series Harbinger of the Storm. I read Obsidian and Blood in MMPB.

Which means I was rambling on about the wrong book. *sigh*

Though I guess most of what I said still is true enough. I had more trouble in the first book keeping track of who was who. By the second book, I had better expectations for what I was getting into.

And the mystery in both-and how things unfold-is pretty awesome.

Sai said:

Yeah, sometimes a character who we had meet once before would pop back up, and I'd have to stop and remember who he was and why he hated so-and-so. I also think the big bad could have been introduced earlier on. I don't mean that he should have been revealed as the bad guy, but I think the main character should have met him at some point before the climax.

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I like to see the big bad guy before the final showdown, too.