The wily Jeff, scribe over at Fantasy Book News & Reviews, has been preying on my noble spirit, issuing me a Gentleman’s Challenge with regards to my review of The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney.
What I want to do is propose a challenge to Aidan: If you will read the rest of The Ten Thousand…I will read and review a book of your choice. I know you might not want to revisit that book, given the discussion around your review, and your recent comments about being burned out a bit on epic fantasy. But I thought I would try this gentlemen’s challenge anyway :)
The reason I wanted to ask you to read the rest of it, is that i had the EXACT SAME opinion as you (seriously) for the first 1/3 or so of the novel. The entire book changes right after the point where you left off reading.
Being a gentleman myself, there was no reasonable way to refuse! His opinion of the first half of The Ten Thousand was eerily similar to mine, but the second half was enough for him to name it his favourite novel so far this year. Big words indeed.
In exchange for finishing The Ten Thousand, my novel of choice for Jeff to read (provided he hasn’t already) is Greg Keyes’ The Briar King. Keyes’ is, in my opinion, easily the most under-read author in Epic Fantasy and I’ll take any chance I can get to spread the word!
Challenge accepted, Jeff! The Ten Thousand will make it into the pile of books I’ll be stuffing in my backpack next week and we’ll see if it holds more water with me this time!
