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The Scar (1996)

by Marina Dyachenko(Favorite Author)

3.93 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

076532993X (ISBN13: 9780765329936)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Tor Books

series

Скитальцы

review 1: I expected a lot more from “The Scar”. The idea of a book translate from Russian and being hailed as a ‘breath of fresh air’, but all I seemed to receive was a face full of hot air that has been spewed from the mouths of aging plots and characters countless times. The main character is painfully mundane, the classic overconfident and conceded soldier that is praised throughout the first twenty or so pages by local townsfolk as he duels with his enemies and bathes in glory and praise. Then, of course, something goes wrong and he loses it all, and is forced to face his own damning pride and bad choices. Now this character isn’t new to the fantasy scene, or any genre for that matter. Yet the eloquent writing and ornate descriptions cannot save leading man Egert... more from coming across as tired. It’s almost as though he knows exactly how this is going to turn out, that he acts like a jerk and must learn his lesson through jeers, shaming, embarrassment and embarking on a quest larger than his struggles with his own ego. He’ll meet a woman who hated the old him but will fall in love with the selfless and courageous man forged by his adventures, and they’ll live happily ever after. One of the worst things is that Egert didn’t have to be the tattered pre-owned model. He could have been the Jamie Lannister of his world, an obvious character reworked in a way that keeps him fresh and interesting. In George R. R. Martin’s masterpiece series, A Song of Ice and Fire, swashbuckling Jamie (spoiler warning) loses his hand in the third installment after being held as a prisoner of war. Even though he is humbled by his lack of skill, Jamie never loses his character and ambitions, something that is unexpected of his character archetype. This is something that “The Scar” fails to deliver on: surprise. I was never surprised, and I never had a “didn’t see that one coming” moments. It felt as though the author(s) expected that I wouldn’t notice that it was the exact same plot of countless other novels and short stories, that maybe putting the lead man in a different color wig would convince the audience that it was an entirely new play on the second night of performances.
review 2: Enjoyed this book a lot. The plot is captivating, the characters are well fleshed out and some of the descriptions of fear and mental anguish are among the best I have read this side of Crime and Punishment. However, I think the book could use a better translator - it has more than a few really disjointed sentences that I had to read multiple times and I assume are written more artfully in the original Russian - and a better editor - some of the early scenes involving Fagirra are introduced with no context and are so far separated from the story at the university that I forgot what took place in the earlier scenes. less

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