Servant of the Empire Goodreads
I read this (belatedly) as a part of the Library of Allenxandria booktube discord channel August Bookclub.
I had trouble reading this book, for the first 50%. Frankly, I found it dull. However, once the book reaches the 50% mark when there’s a ‘coliseum’ scene, the book speeds up A LOT. It took me two months to read the first 50%, but three days to read the last 50%.
I have to say, I didn’t like this book as much as I liked book 1. Not only was the reading experience uneven (see the pacing problems I mentioned above), but I wasn’t sold on the romance between Mara and Kevin. I don’t know, maybe their romance will pay off in book 3. I felt the romance was pretty good, but it didn’t resolve pleasantly in this book. NOW THAT SAID, I liked Kevin’s functional role in the story, pushing back on the staid people of Kelewan with his unorthodox foreign morality.
This is my first Riftwar book, and after reading this I have the feeling that this book lacks context necessary to understand it fully. I feel like I should read more of the Riftwar to understand what is going on.
Finally, I this book was almost double the length of the first book in the series. The older I get, the less patient I am for uber long books. At 830 pages (or 31hours in the case of the audiobook), this book didn’t earn it’s length. I felt the first book at 450 pages was an ideal length
The History of Christianity re-review
I just re-read this one… only I had no idea I read it before until I was typing up this review and found it in my records.
What this does well: it is a good introduction to events surrounding the development of the early Church, from pre-Christ in Rome, Paul, and the founding of the Church, up until the birthing pains of the Protestant movement with Savanarolla, a Czech professor and Maester Ekhart. I think this is a good place to start your research into the topic of Christian history.
What it does poorly: This lecturer was a former monk, and he wore his biases on his sleeve. He used derogative language when speaking about the pre-Christian roman faiths, and got some facts wrong (based on what I learned while reading this book here a few weeks ago). Also, it does NOT delve into the details all that well. As this tried to cover over a thousand years of history, that is understandible, but still. This book barely touched on the Great Schism (for only 15minutes) as an example. This is a good starting place, but not a good stopping place. You need more information to really drill down into the details.
John Mendez- Book Reviews and More 