Michelle Feist's Reviews > Chronicles of the Black Company

Couldn't keep reading...This book got such good reviews in the places I checked and I had had my eye on it for some time, so I was looking forward to enjoying a great fantasy story. Maybe the story will get better, but it's the writing style that I can't get past! It's so choppy and lacks detail or smooth transitions from scene to scene. I felt like I was reading something my grade 6's would write! I could get NO feeling for any of the characters so far, not even the narrator - they all felt flat and contrived and empty. And the context and developing situations were not desribed or narrated in a way that gave any sense of urgency or danger...everything was matter-of-fact and expressed in the same "monotone" voice. Supposedly some evil creature had been unleashed from an ancient tomb, and was causing mayhem and terror in the city, which you think would be a tense and suspenseful situation, but you'd never know it from the flat dialogue and the lame reaction of the characters. So I abandoned this book...life is too short and there are too many other good books to read to waste time on one that doesn't pull me in and keep me hooked.