Pam
10/11/2024
This fantasy story from 1970 starts with the MC waking up in a hospital and realizing he doesn't remember who he is -- but he's pretty sure he's in danger.
So the first part of the book follows him as he tries to piece together the clues of his past, and then the second part is heavy fighting/action, but the third part is where it really sucked me in.
I found the first two-thirds interesting objectively but wasn't feeling truly invested in the outcome for the majority of it. For me, that always means a book is a candidate for DNF'ing, which I considered here a couple of times, but I've been trying to read more "classics", and since this was holding my attention I stuck with it. And then by the end I could not. put. it. down. So I'm glad I stuck with it, but it's a loooong series, and I don't have any interest in continuing it.
The writing style isn't my favorite, the MC isn't my favorite, and it looks like there won't be any real resolution for quite a while. Book 1 definitely concludes an arc, so it works as a stopping point even though there are mostly just a bunch of unanswered questions and unresolved issues, which isn't the most satisfying reading experience, but it does work pretty decently as a standalone to set up the rest of the series. Not quite as much of a standalone as I was expecting, but I'm still glad I read it for the "classics" experience.