My goodreads review of "Feast of Souls" by C.S. Friedman

Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was rather let down by this book, but it's not what you think.

Let me preface this by first stating that I am a huge fan of the Coldfire Trilogy by this same author. I'm just a fan in fact, that I can easily admit that without reservation it is my favorite trilogy of books. I believe that this is where all my issues arise from.

In the Coldfire books we are introduced to the best anti-hero (in my opinion) ever written, and this book seems to try and strike lightning twice in the same place, and misses. The protagonist of this series is interesting, but she just doesn't appear to have the depth that Gerald Tarrant did. Specifically, she has a mean streak in her, and that coupled with her desire to survive is all well and interesting, but it's not "I quite literally made a deal with the literal devil" interesting.

Then there is the issue that I think that the synopsis of the book is far more interesting than the book itself. I really believe that the ideas behind the book were spot on, but sadly I found the execution lacking.

These two things together spell out one thing to me. I was let down by my expectations of what I thought this book would be. I'm not saying it was a bad book, because it wasn't. In fact, it was a pretty brilliant book, taking a wonderfully refreshing stance on the cost of performing sorcery, but I had too many ideas of what to expect and that skewed my enjoyment of the book when the reality of the book was far less than what I had anticipated.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has not read the Coldfire books (because if you haven't, then you should read those instead!), who enjoy fantasy books involving magic, dark plots, classical romances, and anything with feminist undertones.

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