Monday, May 08, 2006

A review of Requiem for the Conqueror by W. Michael Gear

I’ve been going back and rereading the books that I grew up with and loved. I do this in part because I remember them fondly and I hope that I’ll enjoy as much now as I did then. Another reason is that I’m getting a little nostalgic in my old age (I’m turning 31 in a month). And another reason is that I know more and have experienced more, thus my experience reading these books changes over time. I find it fascinating to read something that I once thought of as a work of art only to find that I view it as illiterate garbage.

The newest book that I’ve reread is “Requiem for the Conqueror” by W. Michael Gear, the first book in the Forbidden Borders trilogy. The book is 622 pages long and too me three days to finish.

The Forbidden Borders are an energy field enclosing humanity to a limited amount of space. This space is rather large and holds dozens of systems, and humanity has been waging war to conquer all of it (from each other, not from aliens or anything).

The main characters are all very interesting, and the “world” is cool, but the author has interjected a lot of religion into the story.

I wouldn’t normally mind this but the religion in question is rather senseless and weak. Gear almost comes off as an understudy of L. Ron Hubbard (notice the initial instead of a first name!) and his Scientology which also started in his novels.

Despite that, this was a very good book. I’m glad that I bought it, but I wouldn’t buy it in hardback. Is that a good enough evaluation?

How’s this; I’d give this book 3 ½ outta 5 stars. It’s better than a lot of books, but not as good as The Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin or the the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

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