Thomcat
8/2/2024
The author's first book, after helping Christopher Tolkien edit the Silmarillion ten years earlier. Yeah, I can see some similarities with Lord of the Rings. Five Canadian students (circa 1984) are whisked to another world - where they have epic parts to play.
The main characters are fairly different, but not at first - that (and struggles with their past) comes out over time. Worldbuilding is also in the background, leaving "good vs evil" as the main foreground. Myth is a major factor as well, and the fact that those myths are connected to ours may make sense - this world is the central, original world. It is also connected, occasionally, through magic - it is this travel that kicks off the novel.
This is high fantasy, and the same author wrote one of my favorite books, Tigana (which I need to reread). That a story this good is also his first novel is pretty amazing. The prose was beautiful, but occasionally dense, and the ending is mostly open for the rest of the trilogy. Nobody went home - and they may not be going home. Other reviewers have pointed out his poor treatment of women in the novel, and a brutal rape scene towards the end doesn't help.
4 stars out of 5, and I look forward to the subsequent episodes.