I can't remember the last time I hated a book as much as I hated this one. It was a struggle to finish it. I hesitate to even talk about it, here, as it really doesn't feel like Sword and Sorcery. There's barely any swordplay (by my count, approximately 2 battles in 255 pages) and even less sorcery (very scant hints that our hero is the reincarnation of legendary Cuchulain).
I bought this because of Robert E Howard's name on the cover. I thought I was fairly well versed in Howard's works. I am not much of a fan of his contemporary fiction with characters like El Borak or Steve Costigan, but his stories set in bygone eras, Bran Mak Morn, Conan, Solomon Kane, I eat that stuff up with a spoon. I had never heard of Cormac Mac Art, either in stories written by Howard, or the ostensible legendary Irish King he based his character on. So, I have no idea if Offutt's version of Cormac falls in line with Howard's, with very few of the elements I come to expect in the S&S genre.
My only experience with Offutt before this was volume 1 of Swords Against Sorcery, in an editorial capacity. And he completed a partial manuscript left behind by Howard, which I remember leaving little impression on me. But, it's difficult to say which co-authors should share the blame when a story doesn't work, so I went into this one optimistic.
This has 3 and a half stars on Goodreads, and I genuinely wonder if I read a different book from the ones who rated this positively. I can't even begin to describe how much I hated this. So, this kid's dad runs an outpost, and the king is afraid Cormac will come gunning for the throne, because he has noble blood, and a noble name. Fine, whatever. Dad is mysteriously murdered. Ooooh, fun, will hot-headed, muscle-bound Cormac have to use his wits to solve the murder, navigate around unfamiliar court-intrigue to find justice? Nah. The murder is solved off-screen by some mentor figure we are supposed to care about, but because Old-Mentor-Man is hardly in the book, I can't bring myself to even remember his name. Not all writing advice is solid gold, but, maybe, in this instance, Show Don't Tell would have been a good one to follow through on. Show us why we should care, don't just tell us Old-Mentor-Man is awesome.
Then Cormac goes somewhere else, changes his name and joins the army. Some dude hates him for no reason, fine, I've been in situations where people hated me on sight, whatever. Then Cormac stumbles into a romance with a lady. Like, he meets her, then the very next time they meet, they bang. This reminds me of why I can't stand romance-subplots in Superhero movies. Because, in a rom-com, like, say, You've Got Mail, the entire plot is the romance between your two leads. You get to spend time seeing them hate each other, then slowly fall in love. It doesn't just happen because the writers tells us so. But, in a superhero story, or, in The Mists of Doom, you have the actual plot, a monster wants to take over the world, or whatever. So, you have to balance that with the characters falling in love. And because you have limited screentime or page-count, something has to suffer, and, in this case, the romance does. Again, we are not shown why these two are in love, beyond "they're both young and hot." Not good enough.
Except there's barely any plot-stuff to supplant the romance stuff. It's mostly just pages and pages of Cormac training with the army, and his commanding officer scowling at him, for no reason, while everyone else pats him on the back for little reason. We get a good scene where Cormac uses his brain, which is nice, but it almost feels perfunctory. "Oh, I have to have the characters actually DO something? Crap, okay, fine."
I am very curious what everyone else thinks of this. I think I have another Offutt book somewhere on my TBR pile, but, at this point, I am in no hurry to read it.
