Disclaimer -
David is my younger brother.
This isn't as bad as it could have been - if
i'd never read the original, shorter -
superior - "Path of the Fury", i would very
probably have given this five stars.
But, as it is...
It's way too long.
Dave twists the storyline in the new, earlier
parts of the book to make it fit the backstory
he originally sketched in the shorter version,
and i'm pretty sure it's inconsistent in
places - even as rewritten here. (Some of the
references to Alicia and Tanis's days in the
Cadre don't seem to me to fit together between
the newer and older parts, for instance.)
He uses some pretty heavy-handed retcons to
insert stuff from the new material in the
existing material (his handling of Alicia's
grandfather is one such, in my opinion).
Basically, most of this project (the
expansion) is an answer to a question that
nobody really asked, not that needed to be
answered.
Read the shorter version first - i'll bet you
can find it cheap right here on Amazon - then
wait a week or so and read this version.
(He even changed the spelling of one of the
characters' name. If it was good enough a
spelling for Thorne Smith, by golly...) |
