Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For those of you that were anxiously awaiting a sequel to Blackveil... sorry. This isn't it. I'm not really sure what happened here. Instead of continuing on with the Second Empire, or resolving the loss of Estral's voice or the betrayal by Zachary's advisers, it seems like the author got tired of writing Green Rider novels and wanted to try her hand at writing a book about cotton mills in a dystopian steampunk version of Victorian England. Yes. Really. For those who have read Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series this book has a similar feel to The Pillars of Creation, where instead of following the characters you know and love, you spend an entire novel following the antics of Richard Rahl's chicken choking half-brother. In this case, Karigan ends up propelled some 168 years into a dreary and repressed would-be future, and spends 90% of the novel there. Defying expectations in this case is not a good thing. I think many readers of Green Rider are attracted to the series by certain qualities of what I would call "clean fantasy" -- fantasy absent the extreme and unrelenting grit of modern writers such as George RR Martin. Things like the Berry sisters and their quirky house. The tower mages with their unusual personalities. Pastoral scenes of horses in the countryside. A reverential unearthing of the mysteries of the past. The fragile romantic sub-plots. The occasional blood, conflict, and tragedy that must be overcome. While technically proficient and occasionally interesting, Mirror Sight contains none of these things, but seems to channel some parts of Terry Goodkind in more ways than just the odd-book-out comparison with Pillars of Creation. The overall feeling of the book is one of impotent frustration, irrelevancy, and negativity. Magic is all but dead. Karigan spends most of the book cooped up in a house. She acquires a horse but is unable to properly ride it, and then it dies. An Eletian becomes a circus exhibit. Karigan trips over a man, falls in love with him, and becomes pregnant. He dies, and the baby vanishes. King Zachary is presented with Karigan's "last letter" but doesn't read it. Karigan spends about two weeks doped up on morphine. A "goddess" is brutally raped and tortured for almost a century. Everyone Karigan meets in the future dies before the end of the book. Karigan becomes permanently disfigured to the extent it makes other people uncomfortable to look at her. None of the plot regarding present day Sacoridia is advanced or resolved. Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series certainly contained similar elements, but was artfully balanced by a sense of philosophical advancement, an unrelenting quest for righteous justice, and set in the context of epic world changing events. Mirror Sight contains none of this balance, leaving merely a feeling of dreary disappointment at the end. Ultimately my suggestion for readers would be this: If you've read this book, just forget it happened. If you haven't read this book, you probably shouldn't. Beyond adding nothing to the series, it may actually diminish your enjoyment of it. Wait a few years for the next book in the series and hope everything returns to normal. My suggestion for the author would be: You can write books outside of the Green Rider series. This really should have been one of them. It would have stood much better on its own.