The Seer King

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The 'Seer King' is an excellent book written intelligently and interestingly, a break from those yarns by the likes of Gemmel who all try so hard yet fail to emulate Eddings. The sex scenes are graphic yes but the idea that this is not how a fantasy book should be written is only held on to by those not wanting to read something a bit different and trying to regain again and again the "quest around the fantasy world" formula. Bunch brought something new to fantasy, not just the sex but accuracy and realism. The battles were described in a fashion that made them stand out from those of other authors - and in a good light. The plot was well devised and again different. The only criticism I would make is that the characters were not well developed even by the standards of the Gemmels and the McAfferys.

Rating:
Summary: Simply wretched
Review: The Seer King offers but two things: graphic sex and detailed descriptions of strategy and battle tactics. Character, world-building, even plot -- all the finer points of literature -- are mostly glossed over or outright ignored. Fine. This is a book that knows its limits. What is objectionable is that its trite. The sex scenes are stale, unimaginative and not particulary evocative. The battle scenes are straightforward descriptions of standard tactics lifted, one supposes, directly from the manual. One is left with the impression that the principal character is a competent soldier, but not the budding Napoleon that the author is attempting to describe. Overall, the novel lacks vivid descriptions of either sex or violence, its supposed strengths. With nothing else to fall back on, the reader is left to regret his/her purchase.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed
Review: This book seems very similar to the Anteros trilogy, with both series having a character telling the story in the first person mode and are betrayed by a magic-user.

However, this book has some graphic sex which seems artificial and tacked-on. They seem to serve no purpose whatsoever.

I found it readable but flawed. Damastes is so blind and ignores so many hints of Tenedos' real character that I was at times extremely annoyed with him. I bought this book and I don't really regret buying it. However, I don't think I'll be buying the next two book. Maybe I'll just try to borrow them from the library.

Of course, I'm 26 and I've been reading sf and fantasy books since I was a child so my standards are quite high. Those people who say "this is the best book I have ever read" are not to be trusted unless they tell you how many books they have read. Maybe they have only read 10 Piers Anthony books before.

Rating:
Summary: Very little happens, sex is used as filler material.
Review: This book was very dissapointing. The concept is good, but apart from brief spurts of action, the book is actually one long philosophical/political debate highlighted by scenes of graphic sex. While I don't have a problem with this per se, it adds nothing to the novel (unless you want to read erotica, but hide the fact that you are doing so), and in fact the reader is left with the impression that these scenes are thrown in because the author was at a loss on how to make his written page quota.

The book further suffers from being written in 1st-person perspective (i.e., I quickly looked out the window before I went downstairs to have breakfast.) which I personally find difficult to read at the best of times anyway. The characters, although talked about ad nauseum, actually see very little development throughout the course of the book, with the side characters mere shadows that are around to fill whitespace.

With the number of fine fantasy series currently available, this is one to avoid. It is not the worst thing I ever read, but it is mediocre fare at best.

Rating:
Summary: absolutely brilliant
Review: This is adult fantasy at its best. Chris Bunch has created a world full of sorcery, battles, intrigue, political backstabbing and human feelings. The technique of the first person narrator works perfectly, given the fact that Damastes is a trustworthy, loyal soldier. A lot of negative things have been written about the sex passages in the book, but I think they are functional and they contribute to the development of the character of Damastes. Not once did I feel that I was reading a fantasy novel that a child could also read. This is a serious book, written for adults. The blood and gore of the battle scenes support this view. The battles, by the way, are described in a way that makes clear that Bunch must have some experience in this field. I can honestly say that this is one of the best books I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome. A tour-de-force
Review: This is one of my favorite books. It is filled with likable characters that believe in their own actions and a realistic world. This is more of a thinking-persons book than most of the useless fantasy out there. A reader of pulp fantasy probably wouldn't care for the book - the plot of the book is intricate, the scope vast, and the good guys are hard to tell from the bad guys. I cheered for Tenedos and his war, and couldn't put the book down until it was finished (staying up all night made it awful hard to go to work the next day). If you like any of the books by Tolkein, Niven and Pournelle, or Vernor Vinge you'll love this book. If you only get one book this year, get this one. - Davis Edwards

Rating:
Summary: Energetic with flaws: a mixxxed bag
Review: This is the opening volume of a war-with-swords-and-magic trilogy, taking place in a somewhat stripped-down world with Roman-empire military technology and also magic and demons.

Let me take care of the sex scenes issue up front. An earlier reviewer was right on the mark when he compared them to "Letters to Penthouse", except, to be precise, they're more like "Letters to Penthouse Variations" in their systematic kinkiness. And they're not there to develop the character or the plot, either. You go along for 50 pages of plot, and then you get a ten page kinky sex scene, sort of like beer commercials in the middle of a football game. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's weird. Well, you can take that as a plus or a minus, it's up to you.

Basically this trilogy is all about war, civil and otherwise. The protagonist, Damastes a Cimabue, is discovered in prison at the beginning of Volume I, expecting to die, penning his reflections on the rise and fall of his career as the friend, tool, and dupe of Tenedos, mage-emperor of Numantia. (Don't get too discouraged, though, that isn't really how the trilogy ends.)

Numantia is an empire which has no emperor, is ruled by a committee, and is unraveling into its component kingdoms. Or so it is when Damastes encounters the Seer (really mage) Tenedos, who has some big ideas but no batallions. Since the book is called "The Seer King", I don't think I'm giving anyway any deep secrets by telling you that through his tactical and strategic abilities Damastes is able to help Tenedos realize some or all of these ideas.

Bunch maintains a lot of energy and is mostly convincing when he is writing about military campaigns, relationships among officers and men, victories, defeats, miserable retreats through lousy terrain, the effects of war on the civilian populace, and so on.

On the minus side, the social-science side of things is pretty weak. In essence this is a world with two empires in it (and some border terrain). There are supposedly some other kingdoms somewhere, but you never find out anything about them. A lot of subject areas just haven't been explored well, such as oceanic trade, supplying the capital city with food, the economic system, the religious infrastructure (you learn about some of the gods, but are there scriptures? disputes? etc.), history, political philosophy, and intellectual pursuits in general. The level of civilization is somewhere between imperial Rome and 17th-century London, but nobody ever reads or writes a book (or scroll).

A huge and powerful secret society of assassins appears, being a sect of demon-worshipers in volume 1, a worker-artisan-peasant alliance in volume 2, and millenarians of some kind in volume 3. And they manage to do this without any aboveground propaganda, organization, etc. Take it from me, it's not that easy to organize even an ordinary secret society, let alone one in which all the thousands of members are fanatical assassins! Of course this is a reflection of Bunch's Viet Nam experience, but it suggests that he never really understood Viet Nam. People don't become VC-style militants just out of mob instinct, without the effects of the social, political, and cultural context.

These things may seem nitpicky, but in my book you have to at least think about these things some to get more than 3 stars.

Then there is the magic. Now, some of it is pretty cool. I kind of like the incantations, with their vague and suggestive wording. And there is some interesting use of substances, like expanding skillets, one boat turned into many boats, that sort of thing.

But when you sit down and try to make sense of it, you start to realize that Bunch has sort of skated over some of the problems. For example, how come nobody else has figured out how to do the stuff that Tenedos does? Is it just that he has more "mana" than anyone ever had in the history of the world before? Or fewer scruples? How come he doesn't use one good spell over and over again, instead of having to create something original for each battle? Although it is crystal clear by the end of Volume 1 that "Great Spells" and the use of demons are as powerful as tactical nukes, how come this has no effect on the organization of armies, states, etc.? How come everyone just organizes for battle the same way as "always", sort of hoping the enemy's next Great Spell won't kill too many thousand? Doesn't technological development induce social change?

Well, that's the sort of thing Bunch would have to address better than he does before he would get top marks from me. Furthermore, since you're going to want to read all 3 books, I think it makes sense to rate the trilogy as a unit. This means that the whole trilogy suffers from the fact that Damastes is so willfully ignorant throughout Volume 2, which I consider to be another defect. However, three stars is not a bad rating in my book.

Rating:
Summary: Greatness, the start of a wonderfull triolgy
Review: This was the first book I had ever read by Bunch and it blew me away. I read it faster than any book I had before. This book is centered around a realistic hero, Damastes. He is the hero but has flaws and he knows about them but won't let that stop him from going from a nobody to being a hero for his kingdom. If you like fastasy books or military books then this is for you. Bunch creates the most realistic military battles I have ever read and sets them in a fully developed world. He must have been In the army himself because is knowledge of military structure is second to none. There are many developed secondary characters that move the story along. Bunch writes fast paced and action packed and doesn't waste any words. There are also great seens of magic from the Seer Tenedos who is Damastes friend and leader. I should also mention that there are grapic sex seens in this book that are well written but if you don't like that kind of stuff its ok because you can skip those parts and you won't loose any of the story. Overall an epic story of military-fantasy and a great read. This is the first book of 3 in this series and the others dont dissapoint either.

Rating:
Summary: Meaningless sex scenes, fun politics, ok battles
Review: Too much of this book reads like "Letters to Penthouse". Don't buy this if you don't like graphic descriptions of sex. I enjoyed the political intrigue tracking the rise of the "Napolean-like" Laish Tenedos. However, I was totally turned off by the sex scenes sprinkled liberally throughout the book. They added nothing to the plot and seemed to exist only to please those who "read" porno. You can simply skip the porno sections and you won't miss a thing in the story. What was the author thinking? Most of the battle scenes were ok but a bit on the short side. Unfortunately, I bought the second book in the series at the same time as the first and I'm debating whether to throw it away or use its pages as a cup coaster.