{"id":12129,"date":"2019-12-14T21:33:17","date_gmt":"2019-12-14T20:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/?p=12129"},"modified":"2019-12-14T21:49:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T20:49:57","slug":"raymond_e_feist_-_magician-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2019\/12\/14\/raymond_e_feist_-_magician-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Raymond E. Feist – “Magician”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I find a new book to read by reading other people’s recommendations online. The difficulty is not finding passionate reviews of fantasy books, but in finding reviews that I can trust. I.e. reviews by people whose tastes are at least somewhat similar to mine.<\/p>\n

The Riftwar saga has been recommended more times than I can remember. People on \/r\/fantasy<\/a> keep mentioning it as their favourite book ever. A few months ago I thought I’d try it out.<\/p>\n

I’ve rarely been as disappointed in a popular book as with this one. This book was just so simplistic in all ways. There is no subtlety or complexity whatsoever. It’s fantasy for beginners; no thinking required.<\/p>\n

The story is simple and linear. The characters’ actions and emotions are always the most predictable ones. Any foreshadowings are pointed out with a heavy hand – “watch closely now, this will be important later!” It’s almost a caricature of a popular book, so bland and so full of clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

I keep records of the books I read. When I was noting down this one, I saw that I had read it before, almost exactly ten years ago. I have no memory of it at all. Apparently it made no impression. That doesn’t surprise me.<\/p>\n

Note to self: try to remember to never read this book again.<\/p>\n

\n

PS: And now I see I even reviewed it<\/a> back then. I was indeed no more impressed the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I find a new book to read by reading other people’s recommendations online. The difficulty is not finding passionate reviews of fantasy books, but in finding reviews that I can trust. I.e. reviews by people whose tastes are at least somewhat similar to mine. The Riftwar saga has been recommended more times than I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12129"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12133,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12129\/revisions\/12133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}