Master of One

DNF/opgegeven na ±34%

Nog een boek waar ik maar niet in kon komen. Verwarrend, moeilijk te volgen, geen diepgang, nauwelijks wereldvorming, geen andere motieven dan “we zijn slecht en willen meer macht”, magie wordt totaal niet uitgelegd, behalve dat het van de elfen is gestolen. Platte personages, zelfs ons hoofdpersonage Rags, wiens belangrijkste eigenschap is dat hij toch wel bijzonder veel expliciet vloekt voor een YA-boek.

Begon behoorlijk intrigerend en de flaptekst beloofde een heel spannend verhaal, maar het was gewoon saai.

Master of One is advertised along the lines of it being a heist story. I love good fantasy heists, and the start of the book starts very promisingly along these lines, with a thief as our main character being recruited to raid some mysterious ruins. This initial quarter of the book is probably the highlight - our thief has a wonderfully sardonic and snarky sense of humour and the puzzles that he has to solve are fun and intriguing.

However, the book then moves onto a quest to find 6 people and their ‘companions' and unfortunately this section drags somewhat. This is not a short book and this section takes up almost half the book and is just not that interesting. The final section, with the confrontation with the big bad picks the pace up a bit again, but that middle section really drags the story down. The other issue is beyond our main thief character, the rest of the characters are really not that interesting/memorable.

A fun enough YA adventure yarn, this does not offer anything particularly innovative and has some pacing issues, but the good parts are interesting enough to keep me reading.