However, generally things move along without major jumps. There are a few jumps where you start a new chapter to find that the trip they started out on at the end of the previous chapter is over and suddenly they are riding into a courtyard after a two day ride, and I remember at least one place where there was the old “winter gave way to dripping eaves and warm winds” time shift. Unlike The Game of Thrones where every character is psychologically developed and there are over a dozen main story lines all going at once, in this book we have the traditional focus on a limited few characters and there are none of the lengthy sections where chapter after chapter shifts to a totally new time and country. But the main characters are psychologically distinct and we see them develop and change. Examples: the inexperience royal who is mislead by his fawning followers who have terrible motives the young woman who is smarter and stronger than she should be given the social roles of her gender the old woman who is wise but judged crazy the aging ruler who was once good but now is old and a bit crazy and weak. The main characters are types in the sense we find them repeatedly in this kind of fantasy. No clunky sentences or terrible dialogue. OK, first of all, the writing is good in this book. It will soon be discovered he has a dark and dangerous mission assigned to him by the Gods!! I am trying not to spoil anything that is why I am being vague.Īnyway, as the story progresses we see the effects Caz has on the lives of the people in the kingdom he comes into contact with, especially two people he ends up assigned to oversee.Īs a hero, Caz is likable and heroic but so totally unassuming you just can’t help but like him.

He is treated horribly on the ship and goes through what we later understand through bits and pieces of revelations is a sort of religious experience. The story takes the “special person who does not know he is special” trope and gives it a bit of a twist by making the hero, Caz, a thirty something man who has had lots of experience in the royal court but ends up in a battle which results in his being sold to a slaver. Eventually, you realize he is neither an old man nor the average person. The tale begins with a grimy old man making his way along the road.

The curse of chalion