Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The fundamental ideal of using African influences for the world-building is fantastic - it appears strange and familiar at the same time. Unfortunately the execution of the story itself is so flawed as to make the book unreadable for most people. As other reviewers have pointed out, it's so dark that I struggled to find any joy in reading the story. There is so much emphasis on bodily functions, both sexual and scatological, it comes off almost comical at times because most of it is gratuitous and not germane to the plot. Most of the characters, especially the protagonist, are irredeemable and impossible to relate to. I couldn't find myself rooting for any of them, and the success or failure of their quest was meaningless to me. Speaking of the quest, the main mystery turns out to be related to something that happened six generations back and this story line is abandoned at the end of the book as we switch to a more simplistic revenge plot line instead. None of this is helped by the mostly non-linear story telling. The writing and prose are good - the author is very talented in that way - but this is unfortunately a big miss on what could have really been a very original setting to an epic fantasy.