Well. This was boring. But at least it went fast.

Plot: Boy is uprooted from everything he knows and is moved about the country/world by his mysterious aunt and her compatriots. THAT’S IT. There’s no resolution! Who writes a book and expects it to do so well that all the interesting stuff will happen in the sequel!?

There’s like 2 fights but mostly it was moving from one place to another WITH NOTHING HAPPENING. Then they got to a place and just had days of talking. NOTHING. HAPPENING.

It wouldn’t have been as annoying if it hadn’t got rather sexist about 2/3rds in. It was probably pretty sexist the whole time but you wouldn’t know as there were barely any women in it until that point. By then though, you realise that none of the women have any kind of personality and they are of all one type:

• a bitch
• a flirt
• the noble, devoted procreator

There were no others! There were about maybe 6 or 7 in the end but they could have just had 3 and covered them all!

Aunt Polgara, the main female character, was a total bitch. She was always miserable and just irritable. So annoying. All the miscellaneous throwaway characters were flirts. Then some of the queens were the noble, devoted procreator.

It’s a standard joke among the other kings that Queen Layla’s been pregnant since she was fourteen.

Uggghh.

Does it pass the test? I suppose. Aunt Pol is probably the second most powerful character in the book. It does technically have more than 2 female characters but they were just…pointless. No fucking bonus points though.

The other irritating thing was all the talks of different people (countries I guess) and they were all cookie-cutter ‘types’. Oh, they’re the traders, they’re the ne’er-do-wells, they’re the warriors, they’re the farmers. BORING.

Finally, the main character is an idiot. Maybe he’s not, maybe he’s just a young, stupid teenager. BUT GEEZ. He just seems like an idiot because the whole thing is laid out for you and he just bumbles along being an idiot. Why would you want to read a second book of him being an idiot and not really catching on to anything important in the plot?

Anyway. What I’m trying to say, is that this book wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t good. It was boring and pointless. Don’t read it.

It get’s 2/5 starts for just being boring as fuck and NOTHING HAPPENING FOR 400 PAGES.