Son of Avonar

Carol Berg's Son of Avonar is an okay midlevel fantasy novel. In the end my feelings on the novel were mixed. I could see the potential for a really good story - decent characters, good plot, go tone, interesting setting - but the execution left me feeling mostly "meh" about the thing.

The novel centers around a lady who at one point was of the nobility but after losing her husband and her child to the kings vendetta against magic users she lives a life of poverty as an outcast. She gathers herbs and other things to sell and makes a meger living off these things. She is intelligent and independent, but lives a day to day life and seems to be going through the motions. Into her life steps a strange man who cannot speak but has mystery surrounding his appearance and his situation. Despite feeling it is a bad idea to get invovled in his dilemma she goes ahead and does so and the novel unfolds from these events.

Not a bad plot overall only two problems, 1. neither she nor the strange man are in the least bit interesting or sympathetic, 2. the authors delivery and pacing of the plot is dry and boring.

I couldn't bring myself to care about anything in this book and had to force myself to read it just to finish it for this challenge. I was disappointed and will not be reading the rest of this series.