Epic Adventure, refreshingly stars a female hero

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this audiobook because it's a good, epic, (what I would call) low-fantasy story. Lots of great characters and solid consistent world, with believable heroes, doing the best they can. The story moves from the micro to the macro covering both individual tales and wider, world-effecting events.

What did you like best about this story?

I love the completeness of the world, the consistency and reality of the characters and the strength of the female characters, particularly Kamala, through whom we can explore the trials and tribulations facing a woman in a man's world.

Which character – as performed by Elisabeth Rodgers – was your favourite?

Toss up between Kamala and Colivar, arguably the main characters but Elisabeth Rodgers gives them both clearly distinctive tones and characters despite being female and male. Something she does all the way through with all of the characters. Elisabeth narrates this story excellently, and it's no nice to hear a woman narrating an epic fantasy novel for a change!

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Is the true price of immortality too high?

Any additional comments?

I think Friedman is an excellent writer, this is the second of her books that I've listened to, the first being Black Sun Rising. I will definitely be back for the sequels in each trilogy. However, I've taken a break from each. Friedman is skilled at creating a consistent world and believable multi-faceted characters. She clearly has a depth of understanding for her stories that is all to often missing. However, I find that there is a little too waxing lyrical from those characters. In both this and Black Sun Rising, the key characters, like so many of us, have various problems and concerns that they worry at when they have chance, but in these stories I found it got repetitive and tedious and detracted from the pace and urgency of what are, frankly, fantastic story lines. I feel that if a quarter of the story was edited out then it would make for an equally in-depth and real story, that moved along at a more reader-friendly rate. It's this that makes me reluctantly reduce the story rating to 4 stars, when otherwise and overall I think it is more than worthy of 5.

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