Wrath of a Mad God
Before I get stuck in to the main body of Wrath of a Mad God I think I should prelude this review by saying that if it wasn't for Raymond E. Feist, and more specifically his astounding novel Magician, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this now. There is little doubt in my mind that Magician is, and will remain to be, one of the greatest books I've ever read and is unquestionably the book that set me on my current path through life. Put quite simply: Magician was the book that stoked my love for writing. Indeed you could say that Magician is the book that led me away from the sciences.
Hopefully you should be left in no doubt then as to the importance of Magician. You should therefore also have some idea as to the esteem I hold it in as being one of the great forces in my life (for better or for worse) that has made me the man I am today.
And now on to the review...
Wrath of a Mad God is the latest paperback in The Darkwar - Raymond E. Feist's third major series set on the worlds of Midkemia and Kelewan. To put this in some kind of context with the rest of the series, it all began, as I have said, with Magician. After Magician came Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon which completed the first series, The Riftwar. After The Riftwar there were the four books of The Serpentwar. Then there was a series of three books which acted as a sort of intermediary series between The Serpentwar and The Darkwar (of which Wrath' is book three). On top of all of this, there have also been a number of other books (which I admit I haven't read) relating to side stories or sub-plots not entirely essential to the main over-riding plot of the multiple series.
With me so far?
I didn't think so. To be honest I can barely keep track of what's going on, and I've read every one of the now thirteen books in the various something-war series.
And this is where the problems begin.
You will probably appreciate at this point that it is almost impossible for me to give you any form of coherent plot synopsis of Wrath of a Mad God, but to put it simply: in The Riftwar, the world of Kelewan was invading Midkemia through portals (or rifts) that their magicians created between worlds. In The Serpentwar there was a big war with a snake-like race and there was another big thing with rifts and a demon-like race called the Dread. In The Darkwar (where we are now) there are yet more rift-related problems only now there are rifts opening up between different levels of existence - kind of like levels of hell - and a barbaric, hellish race of people known as the Dasati are invading Kelewan. To make things more confusing if they couldn't be more so already, there is on top of this an extremely complicated and often changing plot involving the various gods of the various worlds and the various levels of existence.
This is where it gets really confusing.
Now I've been very patient with Raymond E. Feist, and not least because of the reasons I outlined at the introduction to this preview. I hold Magician in the highest regard, and I must say I also really enjoyed the follow up series The Serpentwar and would recommend it to anybody. The problem is however, I think Feist has now got himself too deep into the lore of his universe and is so embroiled in creating this world of his (and others') imaginings that he has lost sight of some of the fundamental elements that made his books great in the first place. Quite simply, the various plots, sub-plots and plots-that-aren't-plots-but-might-be-plots-until Feist-can-decide-what-he's-doing are simply getting out of control.
This isn't fantasy any more: it's detective-fantasy.
I honestly think that what Feist has created here is possibly the most unique blend of genre types I've ever encountered.
What we have here is a group of characters who each know something, but won't always tell the other characters everything that they know, or even at times who (or what) they are. And I've got to be blunt here - by the time you get to Wrath of a Mad God this is very - and I mean very - frustrating.
You know I actually found myself swearing at the book near the end when certain characters goes down the "I think it's about time I told you the whole truth," path, but then they don't, or at least not completely. And then another character does a similar thing, but even then they don't tell us everything, and even then they're lying but it's all alright because of the philosophical mumbo-jumbo about the scorpion and the frog. You know I don't think I've ever sworn at a book before, but I did at this one.
And this isn't even to say Wrath is necessarily a bad book. In fact I'd say it's probably the best of The Darkwar, and possibly the best I've read of Feist's work since The Serpentwar. The problem is that Feist has created so much intrigue, and so many plots within plots that as a reader you're left completely baffled as to what on earth is going on. At times indeed I'm not sure even Feist himself knows.
I've got to say there was a certain revelation in Wrath that actually made me question Feist's sanity. Did he really mean to do what he did? Did he really mean to make the characters (and the reader) think one way for all those books only then to bowl such a googly at us that die-hard Feist fanatics like me have to put the book down and walk around the room to relieve tension? You have to ask yourself, either Feist had this planned all along and is a genius, or quite simply, he has lost his mind.
And to make things worse this isn't even the final book in the seemingly never-ending Riftwar Cycle.
Rides a Dread Legion is on the horizon and still the gods are manipulating the characters to their own end. In fact I'd say the whole over-riding game of chess between the gods is such a deep and complicated story line that Feist seems to have to create all these different wars just in order to step ever on towards the grand finale in which we know (and I'm not giving anything away here) that Pug will see everyone he loves die.
The Guardian quote on the back of Wrath says, "File under guilty pleasure" and I'd have to say I agree, sort of. This book, and indeed this series, is a guilty pleasure - but in a pleasure through pain sort of way. You know how some people when they're young sort of like the pain of wiggling their loose milk-teeth? It's sort of like that.
You won't be surprised then to learn that even though this book in many respects put me through torture, I will certainly be buying the next book when it's out in paperback, as I will till the day the many series end. I can only hope that the series will reach a conclusion soon. As to whether Feist is a genius or officially insane, I will reserve judgement. Wrath of a Mad God has done a lot to restore my faith in the author, which I admit was faltering somewhat a few books back, but things seem now to be back on course. Apparently the new Demonwar Saga (yes, another war) is only to be two books so we shall wait and see what comes of it. Until then, if you haven't read any of Raymond E. Feist's work, I recommend you read Magician. If you're a fan of Feist, I do recommend you read Wrath of a Mad God... but then only if like me, you do sometimes enjoy a guilty pleasure.
