08.28.10

Review: The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts

Posted in Reviews at 1:49 pm by Fiona

The Curse of the Mistwraith (Wars of Light & Shadow, #1; Arc 1, #1)The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reading this book was like eating an artichoke for me. Just as I really like artichokes, I liked the story and the characters, but, getting to the heart of the story took forever. Just like the elusive heart of an artichoke, the story was buried under layers and layers of prose.

Janny Wurts is a master craftsman at arranging words on a page, but to me the words often got in the way of the story’s progression. I like to think I possess a pretty good vocabulary yet I found myself seeking out a dictionary on several occasions. I also found myself re-reading sentence after sentence and paragraph after paragraph trying to figure out what she was on about. This made reading this book somewhat of a chore at times. I can usually manage to complete an 800-1000 page book in well under a month, The Curse of the Mistwraith took me nearly two of extremely dense reading.

I don’t eat artichokes every meal, but I do enjoy one every now and then. I will read more of Janny’s books, but I’m actually relieved my advance copy of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings has arrived so I can read something by my comfortable old friend for a while and rest my brain.

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