Raymond E. Feist: At the Gates of Darkness review

*** INTRODUCTION ***
As this is my first review, I feel this review should come with a disclaimer. I love reading fantasy books. For me, it started when I received The Never Ending Story as a birthday present as a child. When I finished that, I switched to the works by Paul van Loon, a Dutch writer who specializes in horror aimed at children. After that, I became familiar with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. More recently, I have been devouring the works of Terry Pratchett and George R.R. Martin. It makes me wish I could quit my current student life, so I could retreat to a library and spend the rest of my days reading one fantasy book after another. Failing that, I have decided to go for the long shot and write my own attempt at fantasy. Progress is slow, but it is quite possibly the most fun I have ever had and, with a little luck and perseverance, maybe someday I will even get published.


I picked up Feist's work in the bookshop of my train station. The one benefit to living a four hour train ride away from the parents is that in the time it takes me to get there and back, I can finish nearly any book under 500 pages. Usually I would pick one of Pratchett's Discworld novels, or the next in Martin's series. Sadly, this time I could not find either's works. This caught me off guard, as usually they have a whole shelf dedicated to Pratchett's works, so I frantically began my search for an adequate replacement. My eye fell on Stephanie Meyer's works. But then I remembered I would sooner eat her books than try to read them. I then browsed through various works, until I came across Feist's At the Gates of Darkness. The scorpion design on the cover was enough to tempt me to read the cover. It spoke of wizards and demons, a losing battle and the promise of suspense, intrige and above all: action.

I must confess at this point, that I had never heard of Raymond E. Feist, much less read his books. I could see that this was part 2 of the Demonwar Saga, but beyond that I had no idea of the scope of his opus. At the time, I was even under the impression that he must have been a new writer. Finally, I decided to buy the book and got on the train.

*** THE REVIEW ***

This second book in the Demonwar Saga starts off with Jim Dasher, who apparently manages to juggle the functions of a nobleman, a spy and the leader of a criminal organization, without too many people catching on.
Discovering that Belasco is trying to summon a demon, and a powerful one at that, into their world, he races off to warn the wizard Pug. The story also follows the elves Gulamendis and Laromendis, as well as Sandreena, who appears to be some sort of crusader, a knight in the 'order of the shield of the weak', a name that does not exactly roll off the tongue.
I would tell you more of the plot, but I am concerned about giving out too many spoilers, as well as giving off the impression that this book is in any way interesting to read.

The book is some 300 pages in length, but by the time I had read the first 100, I had to fight every urge in my body not to throw this book in the trash. After all, I had just spent ten euros on it. Ten euros buys too much to simply discard a book, even one as infuriatingly poorly written as this one.

There. I said it. This book is written poorly.

Had the errors in Feist's work been limited to the rare spelling error or an other such oversight, I could have forgiven him. After all, not even the likes of Pratchett or Martin are immune to these kinds of slip-ups. I wish Feist's mistakes had been limited to this.

Sadly, this is not the case. The more I read the book, the more I noticed Feist's annoying habits. For example the way Feist would create any form of tension, only to diffuse it very quickly, sometimes even in the same sentence. Because he does this, there is never any doubt about his protagonists succeeding. He writes their actions in such a way that it's clear from the start that they'll succeed. This makes it impossible to get invested.

Another, more stylistic, error is his habit of using 'said' to denote all forms of communication. Yes, there are only so many ways that a writer can describe that one of his characters is speaking, but in Feist's case it doesn't matter if the character is talking (making 'said' appropriate), yelling, whispering or asking a question. Even if you were to defend his overenthusiastic use of the word 'said', it makes for a very boring dialogue exchange. It gives off the impression that the characters are themselves not invested in their own dialogue. If they aren't, why should we be, then?

Lastly, and the least reoccuring, are Feist's awkward transitions and exposition. Several chapters literally end with one character wondering how another is doing, followed by the next chapter switching to that other character. In the first place it diffuses any tension built up for that second character. Secondly, while it's natural for one character to worry about another's endeavors, it comes across as nothing but a way to force the reader to think about the second character. The result is something like this:

Chapter 1:
'Remember, Bob is doing that one dangerous, but vitally important thing, he could very well die! Please care about this and hope that Bob succeeds!'

Chapter 2:
'Bob succeeds!'

Sucks, doesn't it?

*** CONCLUSION ***

Overall, Feist's book was immensely disappointing to me. It is painfully obvious that he simply wasn't exactly inspired, as far as the content for this book is concerned. The plot is very simple, at no point did I come across any of the 'intrige' I was promised by the back cover. Characters, at least in as far as protagonists are concerned, are never in any real trouble for long.

Having watched Al Franken's debate with Ann Coulter, I recalled the part in which he takes Coulter's book and tells the anecdote that he told his assistant he could open the book at any page and find an inaccuracy.
Inspired, I did the same for Feist's book, arming myself with a ballpoint pen.

As a result, I have now corrected all 322 pages and will be mailing it back to Feist's England-based publisher.

If this sort of drivel can get greenlighted for publishing, maybe my own chances aren't as low as I had thought.

As a final note to those people who are fans of Feist's work:

I apologize if at any point I offended you. Please bear in mind that this is the only book by him that I have read. If you must find out what happens in this book, do yourself a favor and look online for a full spoiler. At the Gates of Darkness just is not worth the read.
/ [Hendrikus]

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