Wartorn : Resurrection

Wartorn: Resurrection, by Robert Asprin and Eric Del-Carlo, is a bubblegum fantasy novel at its finest. As some of you may or may not know, I am a huge fan of bubblegum fantasy, the fast paced fight scenes,story that seems to move quickly without a complex plot over a complex subplot over complex characters which requires you to to take out a pen and pad to keep score. Now while this type of fantasy may not win fantasy book of the year when compared to the rest of those dictionary length novels that Jordan and Martin put out, I had a GREAT time reading this book. Since this is number one in the series and has more then the usual one main character this is really just a beginning. While I give this book a good rating, I can not honestly say book whether 2 and beyond will continue this type of fast moving fantasy work or could really take it to the toilet (and I don’t mean just reading this on the
porcelain throne).

I haven’t written a review in quite a long time, so let me explain something to the unknowing, we write reviews not a synopsis like on the back of the book. I want to tell you why I like or dislike a book not tell the story. That being said let me explain how this book is setup. We have a chapter per character type of story in that Martin type style, but here we don’t have 546 characters but rather 5 main characters, at least this is how the first book presents it. The overall premise is how these main characters interact on both sides of a huge war. At the beginning of the book we have the Felk and the city states at war and a few of the character start out on the side of the city states to only be absorbed by the rolling army of the Felk. The one thing that leads the Felk army to greatness is the wizards which they employ in their ranks which the city states do not. We get to see magic being used only by the evil army in this early cycle of the story. Really the most enjoyable aspect of the book is seeing both sides of the war in the same detail, which gives it a nice sense of duality.

I do have to make a comment (not that I am opinionated
or anything) about something which will make the people that know me laugh out loud on how ironic this is coming out of my mouth. This book has a few spots where the work F*** is used. Hmm, now I know I am not the best person to talk about this, but I think this takes away from this book. Here I am up on my platform telling you about how writing a book is just a type of art form like painting, sculpting etc… I think this takes away from that feeling of writing, especially where it is totally not necessary to the story. I think the authors are using this to show how tough the female mercenary is, but let me tell you, it is not necessary and I found it not only unnecessary but rather degrading to the written work of Asprin/Del-Carlo.

While some of the obvious plots that the main characters get into seem a little far fetched at times, I never felt that “well this is just dumb” thought, but just rather continued to enjoy the book. That is what makes a good book to me, I wanted to continue to read and Wartorn : Resurrection did just that, it made me stay up late to finish the next chapter or two. We have a perceived good vs. evil already at this point in the series which is also nice, but there are a few twists that make sure this story does not drive itself right into the outline of generic fantasy book number 213. The army of the dark general moves on and how will each of these characters play a plot in furthering or stopping this army remains to be seen, which is why I will continue to read the series. Another thing is, while I understand this is a fast moving story where we jump right into the action in the beginning of a world war, we reall do not get good sense of the world itself. Hopefully we will get a little more background in other books in the series to put together a useful picture of the world itself.

Where will this series go? See this is the section where I could either come back and say, wow Dalerone good job on rating this book, or what the heck were you thinking, this “series” stunk. Well this being book one I have to just rate this book on the fact that I think it will go somewhere good. Hopefully we don’t have this series turn into a money maker only where there is no end in sight. Heck for all we know there may be new characters introduced in book two or three, with their own chapters. All in all a good start to a fast fun filled bubblegum fantasy story.

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