My thoughts on the Wrath of a Mad God - please forgive any spelling mistakes - particularly in names/races
As much as I love the work of Raymond Feist, this latest book struck me as somewhat disappointing.
The one thing I have admired about Feist's writing is his characters and their development. I enjoy seeing the characters struggle with flaws and overcome obstacles and I like the repetition of certain character traits...such as the "Jimmy the hand line". It makes it seem like there are always similar people no matter what time you live in. In WoaMG, I found some of the characters disappointing. Pug didn't seem his all powerful self, Thomas was conspicuously absent from most of the book, Miranda was too self restrained, and not enough was said about most of the main characters like Tad, Zane, Jommy, Kaspar, Erik et al.
I was also irritated at the inconsistancy between the other series that have already been mentioned, but also at the seemingly complete lack of imagination of the most brilliant minds of the midkemia/kelewan realms. With the ever mentioned awesome magical power that they commanded I fail to see why the magicians could only make a select number of rifts and why they couldn't contrive some way to speed the evacuation process along.
Another point of annoyance was that when fighting to save their world, and possibly by extension the universe, the tsuranni were fighting mostly alone, and the cho-ja, who refused to elave the world, and who had powerful magicians, were absent from all the conflict. I would have also thought that Thomas would have helped, along with whatever dragon he was with, maybe some elves and sauur (sp?) would have been drafted to assist them.
Also, I may have to go back and reread a few books, but I am under the impression that the deark god of the Dastati was a dread lord, and that Pug and Thomas had overcome and bound a dreadlord before.
And one more thing, I wish he wouldn't milk the "Mara of the Acoma" thing. I loved the Empire series more than all the others but in the WoaMG he mentions her a lot for someone thats been dead for a long time (over a century?) I liked it when there was a coupke of referances to other books but by the 10th time it seemed like he was leaning on it to explain all the actions of the Tsurani
However, I have to say that it was mainy the last half of the book that I disliked. The first part, with Kaspar + Jommy + crew meeting the elves, Pug and co. in the other realm meeting the others that were to become important later on, I liked.
I don't think Nalor is really dead either, you can't expect the expected when the trickster god is involved, and when it came to him saying he wouldn't be leaving I didn't think it would be a "forever" sort of death, Pug, Thomas and Macros have all died and come back, I think that Nakor would be put on the same kind of path.
One more thing before I end my longest ever post....what was the point in the Quor?
