Don't take a Book by its Covor

Here's another book that I own hard cover. (I own a TON of hard copy books, but not all of them are in great condition). I tend to pick them up at random, sometimes at thrift stores, bag sales, the library for sale bin, generally for no other reason than that the cover interests me.

Heh, this time I got a lemon.

Bard
by Keith Taylor
293 pages

I know that I said I was not going to be posting about any books that I didn't like. BUT I forced myself to read this whole book, hoping that as it got closer to the end it would improve, but it didn't.

The book itself is about a Bard named Fellimid mac Fal, and his adventures. How he interacts with the normal everyday people, as well as the people in power is shown to be simple and more or less the same in both cases.

But the writing is extremely dry. What irritated me most was the fact that it would lead up to an event, and then black out more or less. So there was no real release after the book made it to a climactic moment.

I am not planing on reading the sequel, even though I bought it as well. Before anyone jumps to the books defense and says that the Lord Of The Rings was also a dry read, they need to know one thing. Tolkien filled you in on what was happening, he didn't lead you into thinking you were going to witness a bloody scene and hold back. His was written as a history.

These are not written as histories, I suppose the best thing that i can say about their style is that they are very thorough. The descriptions would do well if the book was going to be made into a movie, but since this was written in the 70's i highly doubt that it is going to be made into one anytime soon.

The one thing I did enjoy about this book was the background of the main character they gave on the back of the book. He's a bard of Erin. There really aren't that many books about Bards that I've seen. So... It does get a small reprieve from my irritation for that small thing.

But I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone unless I knew they needed something to help them get to sleep. When I said I FORCED myself to finish reading this book, I mean it. I kept putting it down and trying to find other things to occupy my time. A book shouldn't make you want to be doing anything other than reading it.

At least, that's my opinion.

After completing it I let it sit for a while, hoping my impression would change, but when it didn't i decided to check out the original print date in the front of the book. It was started in the late 70's as a serial for a magazine. That means that the holes that bothered me weren't necessarily intentional, but were likely hook points where they'd left off.

That doesn't mean I like it, it just means that I'm not going to stop you from reading it and making your own opinion. But don't say you weren't warned.