Changes

The book continued, slightly, in the same vein. It was very difficult to work out, for a long time, what was going on, who the major characters were going to be, and why all the events were happening. I found it difficult to follow. It wasn't until about page 90 that I read anything that I felt like explained the background of the place or the events, and in my mind, that's rather too late in a 300 page book. After about another ten pages, I idly flicked through to the end, and found the glossary. And at that point, things became a lot clearer - I wish it had been at the front, or that there had just been a small amount of explanation as to what, for example, a 'Claw' was - it's a member or a covert organisation in this empire. Which is fine, but I could read the whole text and be none the wiser. It's difficult to build worlds, and I could see there was a lot of effort and detail put into this one, but I felt like the author was so comfortable within his own world, he hadn't thought about how it might appear to an outsider. Readers don't need to be condescended to, but a little explanation woven into the story would not go amiss, as I spent all too much of the first hundred pages thinking 'why?' and 'what's going on now?' Perhaps this is because I haven't read another book, by another author, set in the same world ( [[''Gardens of the Moon]]'', but Steven Erikson), but I can't help feeling that ought to be immaterial.