Imago Chronicles Book One: A Warrior's Tale Non-Review

I'm back again with a non-review. I don't like writing these, but sometimes they're a necessity. This time it's L.T. Suzuki's Imago Chronicles Book One: A Warrior's Tale. Like all my other non-reviews, I'll preface this by saying I wasn't able to finish the book. The characters failed to grab me and I couldn't ignore the editing errors. Read on to find out more about why I couldn't finish A Warrior's Tale.

A Warrior's Tale tells the story of Nayla Treeborn, a half-elf, half-human, and how she goes from being an abused child to a deadly warrior: "[She] is faced with a war that will decide the fate of all the free peoples. In a desperate bid to deliver word to the Elf King, she fights to survive the deadly elements in a strange land. This adventure recounts the defining moments in her life that forged her into a deadly warrior, a great captain and a legend amongst her people."

Okay, so far it's a little generic, but I can dig it. The story begins with Nayla trapped in a snowy mountain pass and the rest of the book (or as far as I got in chapter five) is told as an extended flashback that shows how she got to that mountain pass.

In the beginning I truly felt for Nayla as she received unwarranted abuse from her father, the High Elf Dahlon Treeborn. But as the story went on, I found Nayla to be a less and less believable character. After the two elves Jorval and Valtar help her escape from her father, she turns into one of those prodigy children. Jorval thinks to himself multiple times how everything she says is so mature for her young age--which we are constantly reminded is different than how normal mortals age. The reader is told over and over again how she's been alive for forty years but is at the same developmental stage as a twelve year old girl. She teaches the elves not to throw rocks at bats because they are useful creatures. She knows martial strategy and insights about life. It was all just a little much.

The other characters in A Warrior's Tale felt rather flat. Jorval is the elf who made a promise to Nayla's mother to protect her. He realizes how he's failed at that promise and helps her escape to make amends. Then there's Valtar, the human hating elf who also hates bats. Once they help Nayla escape and find the Kagai Warriors, more generic characters join the cast. There are wise old martial arts masters and hot headed young pupils that pick on Nayla because she's small and a girl. While not every character needs to be unique and archetypes are useful--especially in epic fantasy--I couldn't help but feel like I'd seen this all before.

But I can overlook stale characters if their actions and dialogue are done well enough. Sadly, this area is A Warrior's Tale biggest failing. Almost every single bit of dialogue has an accompanying tag, but the author eschews simple tags like said and asked. I can't tell you how many times I read tags like, "lamented the child," "queried Nayla," etc. etc. It felt like the author used a thesaurus at every possible opportunity. It slows the pace of the novel down to a crawl and it's tedious to get through. Plus, every single tag has the character's name. I don't think I ever saw a simple he said or she said.

Really it's these issues that drag A Warrior's Tale down. I couldn't make it past the fifth chapter. I read a couple of chapters of dialogue out loud to some friends and they agreed that it would get annoying after a while. Yes that's not the most scientific study, but I think it helped seal the deal in my mind.

I hate stopping books midway through, but I don't think I could help it with A Warrior's Tale. On a positive note, because of the author's extensive experience with martial arts, the parts that focused on Nayla's training and fighting style were well envisioned. Still well envisioned doesn't make up for the poor dialogue and stale characters. A Warrior's Tale needs a good edit because right now it feels like a stereotypical self-published book, and I don't like using the term self-published pejoratively. It's not a terrible book, just too tedious for me to finish. I'm not going to attempt to read the rest of the series.