Final Thoughts?

[Scott, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms]

This thread is somewhere to post a final comment or review about Prince of Thorns. Did you like it and why (or why not)? How would you rate the book?

No spoiler tags are necessary in this thread as it's generally understood that posters have read the entirety of the book. :)

[Ashley, Khaleesi across the Narrow Sea]

I actually gave this book one star and the reasoning behind it was that I just...I just couldn't get behind it. I felt like there were a lot of plot holes and things that didn't make sense in it. I just wrote a really long review about it and I don't want to rehash everything but here's a list of some of the issues I had
1 - the magic system. what was even up with that, it wasn't explained really in any way at all, there seemed to be different sorts of magic but it was all quite confusing.
2 - the fact that a bunch of grown, hardened men follow a 14 year old boy. i understand....the accepted reasoning behind this but I still don't find it very realistic (but then what about this book is)
3 - everything always goes Jorg's way. always. Even when he gets stabbed, it still goes his way.

I'm sure there are more things that I wanted to say, but as I just wrote a long review about it I am feeling a bit jumbled. Has anyone else felt this way about the book? There were just so many things that didn't make sense to me I don't know where to start, and it's a shame because I really went into this book with an open mind and tried to keep it through out reading it!

[Gary]

I had several problems with this book, a lot of which have to do with the world building.

What happened to the rest of the technology? There are books on philosophy, religion and Asian martial arts that survived the Apocolypse that apparently re-awakened magic (which is, I agree Ashley, not fleshed out in this installment) so there are references to Plato, Jesus, the far off lands of Nippon, but no books on Chemistry, Biology, Physics or manufacturing? Nobody bothers with gunpowder and firearms?

There's still Builder's steel, but it's only apparently good for swords. Wouldn't some book on the ancient art of the steam engine have shown up someplace?

It doesn't say outright that it was a nuclear weapon that Jorg lights on fire toward the end, but I don't think that would work. I don't think the mechanisms of such a weapon would survive that long at all, but if they did, setting them off with flame rather than a firing mechanism or detonation system? Again, maybe not the kind of weapon we're familiar with, but it still seemed improbable at best.

[So]

1 - the magic system. what was even up with that, it wasn't explained really in any way at all, there seemed to be different sorts of magic but it was all quite confusing.
2 - the fact that a bunch of grown, hardened men follow a 14 year old boy. i understand....the accepted reasoning behind this but I still don't find it very realistic (but then what about this book is)
3 - everything always goes Jorg's way. always. Even when he gets stabbed, it still goes his way.

I couldn't have summed it up any better. These are the exact problems that I had with the book aswell.

There is even one point where he is ten years old and is squaring off against a man three times his size. It's almost like Mark Lawrence wrote this while playing a video game or something because there is nothing believable in this book whatsoever.

Also there is no world building. It doesn't bother me if the story is good but well....
Most of the time they just miraculously end up where the story is suppose to be and a town being described as vomit isn't exactly putting my imagination to work.

[Ashley, Khaleesi across the Narrow Sea]

That is true though, you're right, there wasn't much world building at all. I think I've read in the later books you get a better sense of the world they live in, but I didn't get much from it this time at all.

Also, The universe is post apocalyptic, and while I think the concept of a novel going from modern times back to a medieval society is pretty cool, I just don't think that I can stomach reading further in the series when I can't even take the characters - who are supposed to be brutal killers - seriously.

[Neilr]

The fact it is based in a Post Apocalyptic world is interesting but I agree, it seemed strange that 1100 years after the Apocalypse (or however long it was) the characters are making references to things like The Wizard Of Oz, Robin Hood, Shakespeare etc