I picked up the first in this series, mainly because I thought to myself, “Maybe a sci-fi writer will bring something interesting to a fantasy novel.”

I was totally wrong.

I finished the book and have these thoughts…
– The setting is absolutely boring and unimaginative
– The characters are chess-pieces
– The message about religion had no depth
– Nothing happened. It was like watching a filler episode of a soapie.

I think I’ve been spoiled by the likes of George R R Martin and China Mieville.

Hehe I guess I should have guessed if I did a KJA post you guys would come out out of the woodwork ;)

“Fast moving, engrossing, clear prose and great characters you learn to care about. This is how “The Edge of World” read to me and despite its length I finished it quite quickly since it’s a very easy read. However this does not mean straightforward, since the novel twists and turns in quite unexpected directions and when you think you have an idea where it goes next, you are soon confounded … Highly, highly recommended and a notable 2009 fantasy novel for me.”

let’s parse this a little ….

“Fast moving, clear prose” = simple writing
“finished it quickly, easy read” = simple writing

this is consistent with all of Keith’s Young Adult fiction,
which includes everything he’s ever had published.

“twists & turns in unexpected directions” – this would seem,
on it’s surface, to be praise for well-thought out and plotted
storylines; however, this is tehKJA under discussion, so a more
plausible explanation is that these “twists & turns” are actually
internal inconsistencies, another of Keith’s hallmarks.

“you are soon confounded” – I’d agree; I’ve been extremely
confounded ever since tehKJAckass was thrust into my life,
with his molesting of Dune …..Who is this guy? Why is he
published at all? And who thought he could write about
Dune? &etc.

“Highly, highly recommended and a notable 2009 fantasy novel for me”
Renai, just who is “Liviu Suciu” and what is his/her/its connection
to TOR, the HLP, Scientology, and so on? I can’t think of another
rational explanation for such an outlandish statement …

How wonderful for him … I couldn’t even finish the first! ;)

I really must take exception to the description of these books as his first foray into fantasy, because it’s simply not true: everything he writes is fantasy, even if it has ships with rockets instead of sails and dinosaur transformers instead of dragons. I have yet to see anything from him that qualifies as real science fiction.

I’ve seen people rave about the world-building in this series and simply don’t get what they’re on about. He took Europe and Arabia and twisted them ever so slightly. Period. Wow, how original! His use of Latin as the arcane language of a world in which there was never a Rome makes no sense whatsoever. And his depiction of religious fanaticism is laughable.

I got the first volume thinking it would be fun to demolish the hackery, but it turned out to be so boring and silly that I just lost interest and gave up. I never read the hack before he began inappropriately touching Dune and I’ll never read another thing by him that doesn’t have “DUNE” on the cover.