Saturday, December 22, 2012

A Crown of Swords

A Crown of Swords. Robert Jordan. 1996. Tor. 896 pages.

I enjoyed A Crown of Swords more than Lord of Chaos. (Though Lord of Chaos had a few GREAT scenes in it.) I took my time with A Crown of Swords knowing that if I forced myself to stick to a certain pace, I wouldn't enjoy it as much. I wanted to want to keep reading this one--not out of obligation, not out of a need to get to the next book, but for the enjoyment of taking it one book at a time, one story at a time, one character at a time.

One of the reasons I didn't feel connected to Lord of Chaos were the ever changing perspectives. A Crown of Swords visits many characters, provides many points of views, follows dozens of stories. But the changes from one to the other flowed much better in my opinion. We'd spend several chapters with Rand, then spend several chapters with Mat, etc. I feel we got to spend at least a  little time with (almost) all the characters. We did get to spend more time with Mat and Min in this book. Min being friendly with Rand. Mat keeping an eye on some of the Aes Sedai (Nynaeve, Elayne, etc.) I still don't feel we get to spend enough time with all the characters. There are some favorites of mine which I'd love to follow more closely.

Several things happen in this one, though, I admit things happen very slowly except for when they don't. Some changes happen quickly, others seem to take several books to give the appearance of budging.

This book isn't as satisfying perhaps as earlier books in the series, but, I still was happy to spend time reading it. 

Read A Crown of Swords
  • If you enjoy LONG fantasy series that move at their own leisurely speed
  • If you love world-building in fantasy novels
  • If you've enjoyed previous books in this series. This is #7.

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Sadly, I gave up on this series around book 5 or 6... They were fantastic books, just SLOW in the middles! Chewy on the edges, but mush in the middle. What aggrivated me the most was that as I trudged through the book, I would think "oh this is the last one, I'm going to read something else." then we get to the last 20 pages, and he sucks me into the next book.