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Shadow of a Dark Queen: Volume One of the Serpentwar Saga: Serpentwar Saga Bk. 1 by: Raymond E. Feist

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Rating: - Impressed

After reading the magician trilogy ,the empire and Arutha's sons books, I thought I'd have a book of much of the same which is fine. How wrong was I...
The theme remains the same, the story is compelling though the best thing are the characters.Mr Feist has been proven able to write stories of noble men and criminals alike and make heroes ( or villains ) out of them.Of all the books up till now this one took me the least time ( two and half days ) to finish and
in the end I just wanted more.If the rest of the books are this good, this will be one of the best fantasy stories I have ever read.

Rating: - Shadow of a Dark Queen

Very mixed feelings about this book. When I started, I got very involved with it, the events were very exciting and varied, the plot seemed like it was going somewhere, and the fact that most of the characters are VERY shallow didn't bother me much as I thought they would be developed further later on.

However, later on, things only got worse. The characters are 2D and most hold no presense in the scene. They feel like if you turned them sideways you wouldnt be able to see them anymore, essentially. This is true to such an extent that in some scenes I wasn't even aware that the main character, Erik, was even present in a scene until he was mentioned at the end of it, and I remembered that we are generally following his perspective. On top of this, many many MANY characters (there are many characters) are introduced as "a large man". What does that even mean?! Are they tall? Are they fat or muscley? What?!

On this note, why is Erik, a prisoner and lowly soldier, always present when the princes and leaders are making their big military decisions?

The interesting nature of the events declined once many events are basically repeated. There are many scenes where Erik rescues girls who are being raped, and he gets a bit angry to prove he has emotions, or realises that a random horse has a gammy foot, seemingly just to prove, yet again, in case we could forget, that he is good with horses.

Finally, at the beginning I eagerly awaited a bit of goblin slashing actions, maybe some trolls or dragons etc. If you're going to write a standard fantasy novel, these features should at least be present! Nearly all the characters are, however, human. There are some snake people, who are essentially human, and a dragon, who gets no action whatsoever. There's a sense that Feist is trying to be innovative and 'realistic' in an almost entirely stereotypical fantasy novel. However it feels like he jsut took a standard fantasy and took the interesting bits out.

Speaking of which, his writing style just screams of trying far too hard to read like a fantasy writer. Get it right or don;'t even try!

I'm focussing on the bad here, and it's not all bad, but generally I felt it was quite a poor quality novel and I was disapointed, having heard such great things of Feist. I'd recommend someone like David Eddings or Michael Moorcock for really high quality fantasy.

Rating: - Dissapointed

Having previously read Feists offerings this Serpentwar Saga Book 1 sadly is lacking, very slow moving and not very interesting characters. It can only get better as the series moves on.

Rating: - Mr K R Northmore

What can i say about this book. The beginning of the "Serpentwar Saga". This book will have you enthralled from start to finish, it'll leave you wanting more, and of course you will ultimately NEED to read the complete set from the Saga. The new characters from the start have you hooked, Erik von Darkmoor is the bastard child of Baron von Darkmoor who denies him his birthright, thing transpire to murder and imprisonment, then the death sentance for Erik and his faithful companion Roo, best leave it there, needless to say things don't always appear what they seem to be. A great read and highly recommended.

Rating: - Brilliant start to the Serpentwar saga!

In my opinion Shadow of a Dark Queen is one of the best book's that Feist has written. He introduces a whole host of new charecter's including the two good friend's, Erik and Roo, who play a major role.

This book is darker than previous novel's and Feist pulls it off superbly. A small band of cut-throat's are trained and sent across the ocean to Novindus to infiltrate the Dark Queen's mass horde, led by Calis and Nakor.

Its the start of another amazing series and you will not be disappointed! I only wish i could read the lot for the first time again as good fantasy fiction is hard to come by.

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