Review - Wrath of a Mad God by Raymond E. Feist (HarperCollins)

Wrath of a Mad God by Raymond E. Feist
Published by HarperCollins
Paperback - 400 pages
Published March 2008
Copy loaned from library

Wow, this one has taken a while to get done. That being said, I wasn't 100% enthusiastic about writing the review, since I was far from enthused after reading the book in the first place.

Wrath of a Mad God is the third installment in Raymond E. Feist's Darkwar Saga, itself a continuation of the events in his Riftwar Saga. While a story and a history that spans so many books is impressive, it becomes extremely confusing if you don't start right at the beginning.

The story of Wrath of a Mad God follows a series of characters on different worlds as they deal with an invasion from the dreaded Dasati empire. Pug, a centuries old magician, is right in the Dasati homeworld, attempting to uncover certain mysteries. His wife, mage Miranda, is part of a war council that attempts to stop the Dasati from invading their world of Kelewan . Also, a small group of soldiers and a thief named Jim Dasher are on the other side of Kelewan, where they are setting up a truce with a lost tribe of elves. Together, they all have one goal - to defeat the Dasati before they consume the universe in the name of their Dark God.

For a lot of this book, I was completely confused and I had little clue as to what was going on. This was the first novel in the series that I had read, and Feist does precious little to recap on history of characters or events. There were a few chapters involving Pug where one of the characters talks for quite a while about a certain historical event (which seems critical to their current position) but it didn't clarify the events of the previous books for me. All it did was serve to further confuse me, as I was presented with a  wealth of disjointed information.

The characters themselves were well written and had great interactions with each other, likely based on the histories created in the previous books. I particularly liked the storyline following Jim Dasher and the soldiers; the camaraderie and sense of brotherhood was well done.

Feist also knows how to write a fight. From the small one on one melees to the large scale battles, he has a grasp of how blows will be parried, how the fighter will adapt as it learns its opponent's strategies, and the logistics of full scale war. The action scenes in this book were by far the most enjoyable.

The world building in this is huge. It's so big that is spans entire dimensions. The only problem is that often it seems to thinly spread over such a large area that there's not enough attention paid to each item. There are so many 'main' characters that you don't get their full flavour, and often a character will be left for large sections of the story, so that you forget what the hell they did once you come back to them. There seems to be a lack of definite focus, and too many viewpoints for the reader to comprehend.

One final thing; Wrath of a Mad God didn't really feel like a fantasy to me. Even though there's swords and magic etc. the image in my head from start to finish was that of an alien invasion (the Dasati needed to terraform Kelewan in their initial incursion in order to acclimatise to their environment, for example). This didn't really strike a chord with me, and I think it was this jarring of ideas as well as the epic scale of the story that put me off it.

In conclusion, Wrath of a Mad God seems to have some nugget of fantasy gold within it, but the plot and characters are stretched too thinly to allow any to be found. Also, the lack of explanation of many past events and people that seem integral to the current story may leave the reader feeling confused and annoyed. Ultimately, I wanted to not finish the book, and it seemed a struggle to care about it at all. If you plan on reading the entire Feist corpus of material, then by all means read Wrath of a Mad God. Otherwise, I would not recommend it at all.