Comments on: REVIEW: Dagger Star by Elizabeth Vaughan

By: Radish

Radish — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:25:09 +0000

*snickering in my coffee at the review*

Wow, Jayne, sounds like E.V. got your goat! Actually, it sound like she got all the goats.

Was there possibly something Freudian [or Jungian] about all those goats?

By: Suze

Suze — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:42:00 +0000

I really enjoyed Warprize, and couldn’t wait for the next one, but never finished it. Got the third one, and quit pretty early on with that, too. Warprize was fabulous, the rest of the trilogy just ran out of steam for me.

By: Jane

Jane — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:04:03 +0000

It’s hard to decide whether the book would have been good on its own without the preceding “War” series. I agree, loonigrrl, that it reads like it was from a different author entirely.

By: Jayne

Jayne — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:30:44 +0000

Jane and I agreed that this book suffers from too high expectations on our part. After the Warprize trilogy, we were set for more greatness and as you say, we got…this. To me it felt like she tried to cram three novels worth of stuff into one.

By: loonigrrl

loonigrrl — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:55:19 +0000

I was thinking today about the sheer crappiness of this book and how much I didn’t want to read another page. It’s like the Warprize trilogy was written by a completely different author. I just don’t get it. How do you go from that . . . to this??? Ugh. Yeah, I’d give it a D, too.

By: Jan

Jan — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:56:56 +0000

Yes, we're joking. Goat-sex fetishists will need to look elsewhere (and frankly I hope they don't come here in the first place. I'm all for chacun à son goût, but that's goût, not goat).

By: Jayne

Jayne — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:04:53 +0000

Jeez, I knew some publishers were going to extremes to pander to the outer levels of kink but didn’t realize that goat-porn was on the horizons already. I think I’ll pass.

Okay, just to clarify, there’s no goat nastiness in this book nor any sign that such is intended in any future books. Just saying…

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:54:49 +0000

That’s a surprise for the next few books. In book two, the heroine is rescued by three goat brothers from a troll that lives under a bridge. She goes for the youngest wild goat. In the third book the middle sensitive quiet goat meets a farm girl who’s always wanted to try bestiality. And in the last book the head of the goat family, who’s often confused with Satan, meets a nun who’s willing to be defrocked.

By: Jayne

Jayne — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:39:38 +0000

Because only were-goats actually have those 18 inch long corkscrewing…but wait a minute, I don’t remember reading anything like that in the book!

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:28:26 +0000

Jayne, you must have missed the post at Dear Bitches. Those goats must be were-goats.

By: veinglory

veinglory — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:53:39 +0000

I’m a fantasy reader and the billion points of veiw approach is one of the most annoying traits of the genre that I comb each synopsis looking for. Just like thug-alpha ‘heroes’ in romance. I think there is a different between an accepted feature of a genre and a lazy vice of a genre.

By: Jayne

Jayne — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:52:33 +0000

I felt the romance was very weak. I’m not surprised at that from a secondary romance but from the primary…no, I needed more. And after a certain point in their relationship, I felt it was pretty much already worked out regardless of the fact that the story wasn’t over. So, no real conflict leads to a dull ending.

As for the endless cast of thousands, it wouldn’t have bothered me if this was book 4 in a 12 book series and but all of this on one book was making my eyes cross trying to keep track of it.

By: Jia

Jia — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:35:03 +0000

I was curious to see what a primarily romance reader thought of this book since I found the romance bits weak. I actually thought this book was more fantasy (albeit a very generic one) rather than fantasy romance, but perhaps I’m not the best judge of that.

Your review brought up a good point though. I think fantasy readers are more used to casts of thousands and lots of elements, so I didn’t even blink when new things came up one after another. But that is a very good point. It definitely is a lot of information to throw at people and then expect them to retain it.

I always find it interesting to see how reading background colors the perception of a book.