Nightseer

Who knew Laurell K. Hamilton wrote a fantasy novel before the Anita Blake series? I sure didn't. I'll have to admit I actually got into the Anita Blake series. I wasn't even so put off by the increase in sexual plots, per se. But after several books, I found myself growing disenchanted with it all. The main character evolved in a way I didn't really like and the stories seems to boil down to "How do we give Anita more powers and add to her harem of lovers?" Anita was so much more interesting as a low-power "reanimator" resisting the allure of vampires and such.

So how does Hamilton's debut novel compare? Not... favorably. I was immediately stricken by the change in perspective (more typical fantasy third-person rather than first). And then by the sheer density of scenes and elements. Everything flowed from one point to the next with no pause between. That sounds like it could be good, but I found the pace oppressive between the introduction of magic types, items, characters, names and the non-stop events. It's centered on a mage at an academy, but even the characters comment on how artifact-level items seem to almost be falling from the sky over the course of... hmm... I don't know. I don't remember much in the way of time breaks, the whole story could have been two or three days, perhaps. @.@ Generally, it felt like too much crammed too tightly together to be useful.