I heard about this large series (12 books, but the last one is in three parts, plus a prequel, in other words, 15 books.) New Spring is the prequel. I picked it to read figuring why not go in chronological order?
A large back-story, mostly unexplained.
The text has many, many non-English words, some in italics, some not, most of them unexplained.
The map is a blatant copy of Middle Earth, with an ocean to the west and south, a river down the middle, mountains to the west between the river and ocean and more to the east, a semi-active volcano, placenames like Valor and Kantor, etc.
There's about one grammar error per page. About ten hard-to-parse sentences per page.
An unhealthy concern, or more like a preoccupation, or should I call it an over-emphasis, or actually, it's an ENDLESS FIXATION on clothes, particularly women's clothing. Sex is treated like a dream. The author is probably
--74% - a woman
--24% - a badly life-trained man
--1.99999% - a man intentionally writing like a woman
--0.00001% - a man, with an unusual writing style
There's a picture of him on the back flyleaf and frankly he doesn't look like a woman but they can do amazing things with wigs these days...
I read somewhat slowly. I tend to chew along, trying to understand every statement and hint. For this book, I decided to just read as fast as my eyes would scan, not bothering to understand everything because I think most of it is utter nonsense that could never have any explanation at all.
This is like a book written by a teenager in high school who's fascinated with emo or elmo or whatever it is, Druids and Dragons and all that shinola, but no concept of meaning and depth.
There's a warrior who is fighting a war which ends when the entire enemy army simultaneously gives up and slinks away for some (explained) reason. He has a sidekick who wears a leather thong around his head, been wearing it so long it has made a groove around, like an equatorial canyon.
There's a Jedi-like class of women, who live extremely long lives and learn to use a power similar to the Star Wars' "Force". They have an academy called the White Tower and it's controlled by a head witch who is chosen (by some unexplained mechanism) when the previous head witch dies. The new one in the book is a doozey, without an ounce of pity or mercy. Why would any woman join this? They do enslave men as their bodyguards via some kind of spell. They don't marry or have children, but they have lots and lots of clothes and jewelry and knicknacks in their apartments. They find it impossible to give orders to a seamstress when ordering new dresses but just have to endure whatever she choses to sew for them. There are all kinds of colors with various (unexplained) meanings and rules (unexplained.) There are novices and full-fledged members and an intermediate class called the "Accepteds". When it's time to test an Accepted, if she passes she enters the top level. If she fails she simply ceases to exist! Painfully.
I don't know why anybody would read this crap.
I read a couple hundred pages because some women I know said the series was wonderful. I finally gave the book up. I don't know how it ends and I don't care. I don't know what the rest of the series is about and I don't want to know. If someone tries to force me to hear "the rest of the story" I will likely demostrate projectile vomiting.
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