Note: The title of this book and series have been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers. The original title reads Die Rose von Illian from Die Götterkriege series.
Okay so this is something I don't usually do: review a book that hasn't been released in English (yet). This book I once was able to buy for only two Euros because it was damaged, so me being a fantasy geek obviously wanted to read it because I loved seeing the griffin on the cover. It looked promising. Whether it holds up or not we'll dive into below the break. Spoilers ahead.
Quick note: I read the Dutch translation, but for simplicity's sake I'm using the English translation of some names and titles.
The Rose of Illian takes us to a fantastical world of griffins and wyverns. An seemingly-immortal man has been killed, and his sword is needed in order to wake up the currently slumbering hero called Askir. Leandra. the wife of the immortal man, and her friends set out on a quest to chase his murderer to his kingdom.
So how'd it hold up? Well, this is arguably one of the most boring fantasies I've ever read. Before I start my short rant, yes, I know there was a book from this series before this one. However, I presumed there was only one book preceding it, not a whole series (because I misread the back).The basic storyline follows a man named Blix and a queen(?) named Leandra. There's a lot going on, but the basic premise is that they want to fight off this evil necromancer guy, find the sword to return to the guy in coma so he can come back to life, and there was something with a temple, too, if I remember it correctly.
I didn't care about the characters and couldn't get into them. They all felt really boring and dull. The only cool character was Zokora, a Darkelf priestess who didn't take any nonsense from anyone. The rest I didn't care for one bit. It was also hard keeping track of who is who. Leandra also gave me serious Mary Sue vibes. She's a swordwielding queen, chosen by the gods apparently, a halfelf, has a tamed griffin friend (which is like super rare in this world) and violet colored eyes.
The plot took a while to get started (at least it felt like it took forever) and there wasn't enough payoff. You'd expect the final battle to be really cool, but it just felt dull like the rest of the book.
It also doesn't help that the book doesn't describe the basics of the world they live in. Granted, there've been books in this series before it, but it's still the start of a new arc, and things will have to be re-established. Warriors did this, Lord Of The Rings did, why not this one? When there are things described like "owls", "lances" and "bulls", I expect them to be either actually be night birds, weapons and bovines, rather than names for rankings or groups of people, or whatever they were. But nope, they just use these words like we know everything. When starting a new arc, it should always be held into consideration that new readers might read this arc first, and Schwartz didn't do this.
On a sidenote, Stonecloud the griffin is pretty much pointless. She's very prominent on the cover of the book, and gets built up to be this big part of the book, but she's barely there. She is ridden by Leandra like...once, maybe twice, and kills a wyvern and carries some things. But that's kinda all she does. I love griffins, and just seeing the one griffin we have and who is advertised on the cover being pushed aside by all the dull characters is just dumb.
It's also very dumb that we get this werefox called Anlynn. An interesting plot point. How many times in the book does she transform into a fox? Zero. What even is the point of making her a werefox if you're not going to use it?
It was just a very tedious and boring book that I don't feel like revisiting. This didn't inspire me to pick up the previous arc, either.
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