Son Of Avonar [Mass Market Paperback]

If you like books like this one, might I suggest another I've recently come across. The Unsuspecting Mage by Brian S. Pratt. It's another fantasy adventure sure to please. I highly recommend it

Of course, I enjoyed Son of Avanor as much as I have enjoyed Song of the Beast and Transformation, but I am a bit disappointed because it seems that Berg never gets out of that 'fallen'-person-turns-hero pattern. Although I find it interesting that she should adopt a female narrative as opposed to Aidan and Seyonne (I know there's Lara in Song of the Beast) this time, and her writing is still very good, I find that I'm not particularly looking forward to the next instalment, probably because I feel this novel by itself has quite an adequate closure to it. For fear of spoiling anything for people who has not read it, I find it almost ridiculous that D'Nathiel is in fact this other person--that was the one part when I had to put down the book and say, 'this sucks'.

But still, it is over all a thoroughly enjoyable book and a few scenes have me crying. Ah, what the? I'm still going to get the second book anyway.

Berg also attempts a more experimental narrative form for this book. Present-time action interweaves with a past that's compelling even though we already know it ends tragically. Ideally, this form would do better than a chronological storyline at giving the past power to illuminate the present. I think that's what Berg was aiming for, and I admire her for attempting it. However, my own opinion is that this would have been better off as two separate books. The suspense would have been drawn out much more in the first story by not knowing the tragic ending, and experiencing that along with the characters would mean more suspense in hoping for a happy resolution to the second storyline. That being said, I still recommend reading this since the two stories are moving enough to make it worthwhile.

My only serious disappointment came at the end of Son of Avonar. The true nature of a number of characters is revealed, but the way it all happens seems very much like the end of an episode of Scooby-Doo: everyone is unmasked at once, requiring a huge amount of exposition to fill in the backstory of why they aren't who we thought they were. In fact, Berg has to bring in a whole new character at the last minute just to cover all that exposition. It's nice to face some surprising plot twists, but it would have been better if there had been more hints of what was to come before the big reveal. That would have made the twisty ending seem more natural.

Nevertheless, I do recommend this book. The characters are fully realized and interestingly flawed, and I was sucked in enough that I was very disappointed to discover we have to wait until the fall for a sequel.