Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a lifelong Donaldson fan, it slays me to admit it - but this book is just not very good (though it does get better as it goes along). For the third book in a four book series, just not enough happens, and a huge number of problems and foes are left to be settled in the fourth book - and with the glacial pace of this book, I actually wonder if the author can pull if off without a bunch of cheap and lame deus ex machina moments, as so marred this book (far too many of the deaths were random, cheap, and lame, for example). There is far too much time spent in pointless and repetitive introspection (particularly in the mind of Linden Avery, who rarely seems to have any new thoughts or revelations) and in conversation between the characters - OK, so the world is ending, and we will spend dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of pages just standing around talking? About the same issues again and again? And again and again and again? And then again some more? What ever happened to an author showing rather than telling? Donaldson has seemingly forgotten his strengths as a writer. In the past even when you wanted to reach into one of his books and strangle Covenant or Linden, you still had Mhoram and Pitchwife and other wonderful and lovable secondary characters to keep you going. In this book I cannot even manage keep the names of most of the secondary characters straight. There are few if any differences between the Humbled (between themselves) or the Giants (other than Longwrath). It is hard to care about characters who are little more than mere plot points - and this from an author who has previously written some of the best character driven epic fantasy out there. Instead the author seems to be trying to write a Malazan book - with a huge cast of mostly undeveloped characters, lots of uberpowerful mages, never before (or rarely) mentioned godlike beings coming out of nowhere, and some confusion as to exactly what is going on. But what works with Malazan - in a universe MEANT to be like that - does not work particularly well in an already established universe which has not previously contained these elements. It just manages to screw around with some long established elements of the series (and NOT in a good way). As a lifelong fan, I will be reading the fourth book. But I hope it will be a heck of a lot better than this one.