I'm on the fence with this one, between a 1 and a 2 star rating. I don't expect the actual craft of the writing to be good in this type of high fantasy novel, but still.

The actual story doesn't feel like it starts until 112 pages in. That's a huge problem. Especially in this case, where I always felt a few steps ahead of David Eddings—meaning there's little to no surprise while reading the entire book.

Call me overly sensitive, but I also found it problematic that all the western nations seemed default white and good, and the evil, exotic nations were all bad easterners. Characters casually talk about genocide and how they can't wait for it.

Again, I get that this is high fantasy, but there's just so little in this book to like, in my opinion. It's slow; the characters are bland; the plot barely goes anywhere; and the revelations are predictable and take too long. I swear, if I had to hear "NOT NOW GARION, YOU'LL LEARN MORE WHEN YOU'RE READY," one more time, I think I'd implode.

I WILL read the second book, though. This one felt like all setup for a bigger story. Which isn't okay—a book should be able to setup the bigger elements of the story while giving us a good story on its own. But my brother read this series when we were younger and I'm going to give it a chance.