66th book of 2019
I get it, inventing an imagined reality is hard. But sometimes the results are just less than the sum of their parts, and despite a lot of work, something has gone terribly wrong.
Exhibit A: Special effects in the Scorpion King
Exhibit B: Iron and Magic
The premise, magic and technology wax and wane throughout time, and a weird kindof-America-but-with-wizards exists where centurions roam the land and an immortal wizard is doing some sort of bad deeds off-screen. The relationship starts off snarky, and never gets out of snark-gear. I’m still not sure why our characters hate one another beyond the needs of the plot.
About once per chapter, there would be some non sequitur that made me wonder if I was actually reading satire:
“Stock up on Cheez-its to survive the siege!” “Don’t kill the gigantically colossal, three-headed elephant with tusks that shoot lightning!”
With a rating of 4.4 (as of this review) it looks like I’m going to be in the minority on this but I guess I’m not in the target audience. I wish I could go back and figure out why this got on my to-read list, I’ll chalk it up to broadening horizons.