Is The Curse of the Mistwraith for you?

[Alissa]

If you like puzzles and characters and factions that don't show their hand until it blows up in your face, you'll have a great time ahead. You can read it both as a standalone or as the stage setter of the Wars of Light and Shadow series (my favorite epic fantasy series ever!!).

I discovered Janny Wurts through her standalones To Ride Hell’s Chasm and The Master of White Storm, I was enchanted by her character-driven yet full of action plots, the originality, the care for the characters and the gorgeous, rich prose.

She writes adult fantasy, that is for sure. The Curse of the Mistwraith is no book for skim read, for it is deep and very layered, complex. The reader is not supplied all the answers up-front and is often prompted to decide what to think about the events and the characters. No cookie-cutter and evil dark VS good light (or evil light VS good dark, for that matter) story, and the plot follows several threads. The characters are superbly rounded and again, while some are instantly likeable and easy to relate to, others are not, and their reasons, or behaviors are pretty consistent, but not instantly unveiled.

The other element to consider is the writing style, rich, beautiful, vibrant and never neutral, but then again if for me it was instant challenge, and then unconditional love, it is clearly a matter of personal preferences.

Mistwraith is a book to court, and its slow burn nature is highly rewarding! I realize that the first chapters are not easy for the reader, the worldbuilding is huge and cleverly interspersed but I wasn't left blind, some things are related quite early in the book so I could form my own opinion. After that, action and basic knowledge of what was going on got me involved, and I read in a "hooking crescendo", until the final sequence after which I decided I was going to read all the series, because if Mistwraith represented a sample of the whole series structure, of the elements of the story, of the roundness of the characters and the unpredictability of the plot, hell I was indeed in for the ride.

And time proved me totally right, even more than I initially thought, given the broader perspective and the worldwide scope of the plot/s right now and the fact the characters kept all their promises and more (I've read up to Initiate's Trial). The Light and Shadows may make you work a bit, since -as in Mistwraith- the characters' motivations aren't in plain sight straightaway. All opens out and converges in the second half, and with a vengeance, and the ending piles it on. A brilliant series design, and so carefully planned that, throughout, the author keeps fitting a multi-layered epic into no wasted steps and brilliantly manages to raise tension and conflict with each volume.

[Shadowdenizen]

I'll echo what Alissa wrote here.

What I particualrly enjoy is that every character, even the tertiary ones, are well-fleshed out, and have thier own agendas, even if they're not immediately obvious.

The usage of language in this series is VERY deliberate, every word is used meticulosuly, and Janny can be a master of the misdirect; scenes that might not make sense when you first read them might suddenly burst into clarity books later! (The best comparison I can make is to Babylon 5 in that regard.)

Most importantly, Janny expects her readers to be able to read and keep up with the story; she doesn't "talk down" to her readers, and really encourages each reader to parse together what we know of the characters and form (and often re-form) your opinions of them from book to book.

This series absolutely deserves more recognition than it currently receives!

And I'll also recommend other books by Janny , including The Cycle of Fire trilogy, as well as seconding To Ride Hell’s Chasm.

If people are interested in doing a series read/analysis, I'm totally down for that. (I've been meaning to re-open this series from the beginning for a while now.)

[Alissa]

I'm setting up a thread for discussion, it will be fun! This series is really very open to speculation, I absolutely agree my opinions formed, re-formed and developed along with the story and the characters!