The Vagrant

An extremely far future world, a mysterious lead with a remarkable sword....for the first dozen or so pages all I could think of was The Book Of The New Sun. Its not that book, of course, or even really an attempt at it. It turns out to be a proficient science fantasy, notable for some imaginative and well drawn bad guys. I had two biggish quibbles with it, namely that the prose style is unnecessarily opaque (again, not unlike Gene Wolfe, but without the sense I get from his books on first read that there is something there, I'm just missing it), and also that somehow, the balance of my enjoyment was off - I found much more to like in the quiet downtime moments than I did in the parts that advanced the plot or the set piece action scenes. Nevertheless, it's an encouraging debut, and I will read the author's next book.