Book Review: The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham

This book had all the trappings of a great read, but petered out after a while. I loved the beginning and expected great things from it as I settled down into that warm anticipation of an entertaining time ahead.

Book Review of The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham
Book Review of The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham

It consists of two sections – “A shadow in Summer” and “A betrayal in Winter”. The two stories share a few characters, but not much more.

My main complaint is that this book is sold as a “fantasy”, but isn’t really. I don’t know what it is with some authors these days naming themselves in the fantasy genre, but ultimately turning out to hardly write any fantastic elements in their plots. I hated this about the Song of Ice and Fire series as well though everyone else seemed to love them. Throw a bone to the fantasy fans by giving them a sniff of cool stuff, but then never deliver. With the Song of Ice and Fire series, it was the “others” and a little bit of dragon stuff, but nothing more.

The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham has a mouth watering and original concept that had so much awesome potential. A mortal human being holding a god like power against its will. So much juice. So much potential for milking this idea, developing it, by making it the focus of the story.

Instead, Daniel Abraham uses it as a prop for a “non fantasy” story. The powers of the Andat are barely ever at display and what we get is a regular story in a medieval – Japanese setting with the entire story of the Andat more or less left out. Not that it’s not interesting. It’s nice and all. But I feel cheated and misled.

But since I started reading it and was involved in the story, I stuck it out. The pacing was quite good at first, but towards the end it began to drag like nothing I’ve ever seen. In both the first and second books, the author makes use of an artificial delay of a few days that he uses to fill in with a lot of boring nothings. It was particularly noticeable in the last book where I found myself skipping page after page of non happenings.

There were a few nice ideas that I haven’t seen anywhere else like “poses” that are used almost as an alternative language as a subtext to what the person is actually saying. But it’s nowhere near enough.

Final verdict is that of a great book that was ruined by not making use of the obvious and ever present element that would have made the series live up to its claims of being a fantasy. And without that, there’s nothing great about it.

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