Most helpful customer reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Could be Better, Jun 23 2003
By A Customer
In this novel by Mercedes Lackey, a young orphan unwillingly Gifted with magic, sees his village demolished by barbaric men. Escaping into the Pelgaris Forest, Darian meets up with the legendary Hawkpeople, who help him overcome his pent-up grief. In my opinion, Darian overcomes his sorrow a bit too fast. In the beginning, Lackey makes an enormous deal about how tragic Darian is, and how misunderstood his entire life was. After a few days with the Hawkpeople, he seems as happy as you could wish. However, the plot is good (if not a little faulty) and the characters are usually quite convincing, especially the gryphon Kel. But I know Lackey has written better novels than this before.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Decidedly mediocre, Feb 9 2003
"Owlflight" isn't the worst fantasy novel that I've ever read, it's just the most unnecessary one. Rebellious thirteen-year-old Darian is an apprentice wizard in the remote village of Emmond's Grove. One day the town is attacked by barbarians, and Darian barely manages to escape after his mentor, Justyn sacrifices himself to delay the approaching army. Fleeing into the woods, Darian meets a band known as the Hawkbrothers. They talk for awhile, there's a climactic battle, and, needless to say, Darian's courage and new magic powers turn out to be the key to defeating the bad guys, after which everybody lives happily until the sequel. The point is that we've seen this entire book before, countless times. The authors are utterly unable to dredge up as much as one unique element in the entire story. The characters, plot, settings, and everything else seem like they were borrowed from earlier works, and everything is completely predictable, to the point where you're almost able to predict exactly how many paragraphs will be spent on each blazingly obvious plot point before moving on to the next one.I'll admit that the authors do a reasonably good job of capturing the emotional turbulence of an teenager who's lost his parents, but other than that, the writing in "Owlflight" is embarrassingly bad. The dialogue never even comes close to sounding like normal conversational speech (how many thirteen-year-olds do you know who say 'intoxicated' rather than 'drunk'?) Also, the authors don't maintain a good balance between internal introspection and plot movement. "Owlflight" is 350 pages long and contains only three action scenes. Most of the space in between is spent on characters endlessly wondering what they should say or do, wondering how other people will react to what they say or do, wondering how people have reacted to what they just said or did, and inevitably taking ten pages to communicate even the simplest point. Some people might defend "Owlflight" on the grounds that it's aimed at a 'young adult' audience, and thus shouldn't be judged by the same standards as real fantasy novels. My response to this is that there are plenty of authors out there who are capable of writing books that appeal to all age groups. I've never understood why some people insist that anyone under the age of fifteen should be satisfied with inferior work. Readers in that age group are actually capable of distinguishing good and bad books. If they get fed only predictable, mediocre nonsense like "Owlflight", they're likely to quit the fantasy genre before they even have a chance to read some of the world's greatest books.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Valdemar novel to enjoy., Dec 13 2002
This is about an orphan, Darian, who is apprenticed to a used-to-be wizard against his will. His parents were trappers, and one day went out during a mage storm and never returned.
One day, his village, Errald's Grove, was attacked while Darian was out picking herbs. The wizard Justyn, who did much but was not appreciated by the villagers, sacrificed himself so the people could get away.
Darian fled into the woods, and was caught by some of the enemy men. He was rescued by a Hawkbrother, Snowfire, and taken to his vale (the homes of the Hawkbrothers, their are many of them).
After a while, he was adopted into the clan as Snowfire's little brother. After a while, they found the villagers had not escaped, but were slaves of the ones who attacked the village.
Darian wanted to go free the villagers, but would the Hawkbrothers help him?
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