I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, some publishers ought to be prosecuted for false advertising. They get the cover wrong, the blurb is misleading and some poor reader gets caught. At least I didn’t pay for this one, and it did fill up a day so hot that there was nothing else to do.
The Heir of Night is promoted as an adventure fantasy, even a wannabe high fantasy. Malian is heir to the throne, and very quickly the reader works out that she is the prophesied saviour of humanity in the never ending battle against the dark swarm. But in order to fulfill her destiny she has to learn to use her psychic powers effectively. Unfortunately, the mere fact that she has psychic powers is cause for her disinheritance and exile. Ahh yes, you guessed it, her teachers are to be found in a far off land, if only she can escape the powers of dark to find them. Predictable? Absolutely.
I can only say that I ploughed through this. It is only just over 400 pages, but finishing this was more an act of self-discipline than anything else. I refuse to write a review unless I have read the whole book, no matter how tedious. In this book I could find almost every possible objection. The characters were wooden. There was absolutely no creativity in the setting. OK the women were the strong characters, but strength isn’t everything. A little bit of creativity and imagination would help.
Lowe couldn’t help but telegraph all her plot twists pages before anything happened. I can imagine her sitting down with her outline thinking, OK next chapter we are going to introduce the huntsman and the hounds, so maybe the hunting scene on this ancient tapestry had better start moving in this chapter. Or, they have closed the portal (yes every possible magical device has been included) but just to let the reader know that the danger isn’t over I’ll have a shadow escape the portal before it closes. Oops I needed two shadows. Oh, well, the reader won’t notice. Really, how stupid does she think her readers are?
So today I am going to pick up another kids book, just for some intelligent reading.
