Fantasy

Sword of Destiny is the second volume of The Witcher saga, which began with The Last Wish. Here, Andrzej Sapkowski maintains the structure and style of the previous book, presenting episodic tales packed with irony and social criticism while developing the protagonist around the story’s main theme. This theme, as the title suggests, is the fight against everything that is …

The review will leave you as spoiled as a rich, white, aristocratic kid. The second book in the Mistborn trilogy, The Well of Ascension, is much more flawed than its predecessor. Still repetitive and occasionally inconsistent, the novel is now also rife with problematic characterization and badly used genre tropes, with even the titular MacGuffin not being used… well, feeling …

Mistborn: The Final Empire is a competent fantasy novel that offers a fascinating cast of characters and a compelling plot, which is ultimately dragged down by repetition and a deeply problematic magic system. The setting is the great city of Luthadel, the center of a feudal empire built over the constant exploitation of the poor, the peasant class called Skaa. …

The Great Hunt finally allows The Wheel of Time to become its own thing, breaking free from most of Tolkien’s structure that so hindered The Eye of the World. It’s a competent fantasy novel that focuses on fleshing out its world while introducing and developing elements that allow the series to stand on its own feet. As the title implies, …

Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel, Elantris, fares much better when it comes to handling the twists and turns of the story than when it’s time to develop its characters and social discussions. The book’s main setting is the city of Elantris, a place wrapped in an aura of mysticism. Its inhabitants, once powerful, shining, and immortal, now find themselves cursed, …

Expanding even more the world of this already mammoth of a series, The Malazan Book of the Fallen‘s fifth volume, Midnight Tides, is an epic about zealotry, suffering, lack of compassion, and the intrinsic problems of a capitalist culture. Steven Erikson continues to build complex societies and tragic characters, cleverly mixing humor, drama, and action with social criticism in a …

Written by Steven Erikson, the fourth installment in The Malazan Book of the Fallen, House of Chains, is the most problematic book so far. Although it still manages to impress us with its thematic complexity, its fragile structure can at times sabotage the strength of the novel. The story returns to the desert in the Seven Cities at the time …

The Last Wish marks the first big appearance of the most famous character of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski: the witcher Geralt of Rivia. Geralt’s subsequent adventures became so famous internationally that even a video game series called The Witcher was created to further develop them. But unlike the videogame – which has an intricate web of political plotlines – the …

Unlike its predecessor, Magician: Master, doesn’t suffer too much from the split of the original novel into two books. Its problems are mostly its own, with a narrative that is unable to justify the strange focus on some of the supporting characters while failing to conclude any plotlines in a way that is not anticlimactic or arbitrary. The story of …

Written by Raymond E. Feist, Magician: Apprentice is a fantasy novel that presents a familiar universe, built on genre tropes, with a story with wasted potential, suffering from some shallow worldbuilding and a highly problematic climax. The book follows a young orphan named Pug and his best friend, Tomas, who see their lives drastically change the moment they come across …