Flightless Falcon

Rating:
Summary: An intriguing fantasy of the journey to locate family
Review: An accident leaves Tamison fearful of the one job he is qualified for - mining - and his attempts to rebuild his life with a new family and position only lead increasingly into poverty. With imprisonment for theft and eventual freedom he embarks on a journey to locate his family and rebuild his life - a journey which will change his world in this intriguing fantasy.

Rating:
Summary: A sorry apology for a book
Review: Not a bad read, although certainly not the best. While it has interesting plot turns you have to wade through a lot of story line before it picks up. In short, not bad for a slow Sunday afternoon but if you things to do you can live another day without reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Flightless Falcon Takes Off
Review: Not a bad read, although certainly not the best. While it has interesting plot turns you have to wade through a lot of story line before it picks up. In short, not bad for a slow Sunday afternoon but if you things to do you can live another day without reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Makes No Sense
Review: The first 20 pages are a mish-mash of deaths, summaries of historical events, declarations of love and hasty marriage proposals. The next 80 or so (I stopped near page 100) are little better. Years are summarized in sentences. The dialogue is quite awful at times and characters' internal musings are preposterous. What served as a story to the point where I stopped consisted of hastily sketched characters being brought together under flimsy premises. The story just doesn't make sense. For example, main character begins as a rookie miner but later is characterized as something of a tunnel expert. Or at one point he is stricken with grief and anxiety over the loss of his family but instead of looking for them stands musing outside a fortune-tellers shop and then flirts with the fortune-teller. Later he's at a fair and just happens to talk to a city guard whose family was also abducted, and the city guard proposes that they join forces.

Coincidence, the main plot device, is used numerous other times to jerk the story forward such that the fortune-teller also joins them and also a thief who tried to rob the main character. I haven't read a half-baked plot like this since playing Dungeons and Dragons in junior high. I can forgive a shallow story if the writing is good or there's something gripping about the characters, or the action, or anything. But this is just yet another bad fantasy novel with a fancy cover.

Rating:
Summary: Makes No Sense
Review: The first 20 pages are a mish-mash of deaths, summaries of historical events, declarations of love and hasty marriage proposals. The next 80 or so (I stopped near page 100) are little better. Years are summarized in sentences. The dialogue is quite awful at times and characters' internal musings are preposterous. What served as a story to the point where I stopped consisted of hastily sketched characters being brought together under flimsy premises. The story just doesn't make sense. For example, main character begins as a rookie miner but later is characterized as something of a tunnel expert. Or at one point he is stricken with grief and anxiety over the loss of his family but instead of looking for them stands musing outside a fortune-tellers shop and then flirts with the fortune-teller. Later he's at a fair and just happens to talk to a city guard whose family was also abducted, and the city guard proposes that they join forces.

Coincidence, the main plot device, is used numerous other times to jerk the story forward such that the fortune-teller also joins them and also a thief who tried to rob the main character. I haven't read a half-baked plot like this since playing Dungeons and Dragons in junior high. I can forgive a shallow story if the writing is good or there's something gripping about the characters, or the action, or anything. But this is just yet another bad fantasy novel with a fancy cover.

Rating:
Summary: A sorry apology for a book
Review: There is nothing in it, and certainly no storyline worth mentioning, just the antics of a badly trained dog and a wimp constantly feeling sorry for himself. I used to be a big fan of this author ; not anymore. When inspiration runs out, lining up words on a page does not make a book ...

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: When he was fifteen, a mine cave-in trapped Tamison for two days and killed his older brother, father, and uncle. For three years Tamison struggled but failed to overcome his fear of the underground. His remaining family fell on hard times until his mother informs him that his thirteen-year-old sister is to get married. A guilt-laden Tamison eventually marries and has children, but cannot keep them fed because the guilds operate everything. Desperate, he tries to steal food, but is caught and sentenced to two years on a chain gang.

When he is freed, Tamison finds his family missing. He learns from a guard that the leader of a nearby city abducted his family and turned them into slaves. Now he begins to attempt a rescue that will leave him wondering who is telling the truth and what really happened to his family?

Overall, FLIGHTLESS FALCON is an interesting fantasy that starts off extremely slow, but once moving (about half way through the book) rapidly takes off in several fascinating directions. Tamison is an intriguing character struggling with a trauma in an unforgiving world. The support cast, especially Tamison's two traveling companions, help propel the story line forward. However, fans will need patience with the story line's snail pace in Mickey Zucker Reichert's latest tale.

Harriet Klausner