It was over rather quickly.
And I mean quickly. Within the span of a few pages, the evil
invading king and his evil invading army were defeated by the plucky underdogs.
Shortly thereafter, in what’s sure to be a setup for a sequel, the leader of
the plucky underdogs is unanimously if begrudgingly appointed leader of them
all and will marry the daughter of the defeated evil king.
Nobody made mistakes.
No major characters died.
Pretty sure only one named character died.
And here we are, finished with John Olson’s The Crystal
King.
A fine story. But it feels written. Written to hit all the
proper points of a novel. And I know it seems callow of me, an unpublished
author, to say so – but this book won’t be winning the Whitney Award for
fantasy for 2017.
I lost track of the pretty bows in this book.
The rebellious, slacker son of a baron grows up into the
role and makes no mistakes but gosh darn it just feels so inadequate in the job
but he does Everything. Right.
The spy of the baron, held in thrall by the baron because
the baron has enslaved his wife with one of the magical crystals, betrays the
baron to help the rebellious slacker son, whose mini crystal-controlled
mercenaries rescue said spouse not really knowing who she is.
The rebels defend themselves against all odds using a
rag-tag, fugitive fleet of cats, badgers, cows and rodents trained to
perfection by those who Shouldn’t Be Meddling in Such Affairs.
And the big, bad baron dies but his evil plotting is twisted
enough by the rebellious son to redeem him at least on paper with his people,
so he can die as a martyr or something rather than a traitor.
The rebellious, slacker son doesn’t get the girl, or at
least the girl he wants.
Olson writes a good battle scene, I’ll give him that. But
the book feels like it was written to a checklist, rather than to a story.
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