I’ve been wanting to try Tad Williams for a while now. I just kept putting it off. I am not opposed to fantasy writers. Some of my favorite books are from this genre. However, for whatever reason, I am always intimidated by them before I start. Perhaps I am afraid the story line will be too foreign for me to follow. Perhaps it is because so many of the great fantasy reads are volumes upon volumes of novels…whatever the cause of my hesitation, once I start I am fine….after all, a great story is a great story no matter the genre….and the fantasy world has some totally amazing storytellers. I have always heard that Tad Williams was one of these amazing storytellers….

Having said all of that…some parts of this book were actually very good….however, other parts were just bad….no, not just bad, but very bad! I might give Tad Williams another go, but I don’t think it will be with this series….I do like how Bobby was loyal in the end…not only to his own self, but also to a friend….So Williams gets full props for the main character. The rest of the story is where it fell short for me. It was not exciting. It was not original. I could pick out dozen of instances where certain characters reminded me of another from some other series, by other writers. I knew who the culprit was almost from the start and I know it was supposed to come as a huge shock…..I also thought the same “action packed monster scenes” were very repetitive and hence, very boring…maybe this was all my own fault as I had very high expectations of Williams. Hearing about the subject of the story excited me. It sounded original. It sounded exciting. It sounded so unique and I was expecting not only to be blown away by it, but refreshed by it as well. I mean seriously, even the title was fantastic to my mind! I was super excited going into this book…..I wanted to finish it a full run, excited to hit my next book…..that didn’t happen….I felt as if I hit a brick wall reading it. I lost all interest about halfway through….I found reasons to either put the book down and find more interesting things to do, or a strong desire to just skim over pages and pages to get to the ending I knew was waiting for me.

The one thing I did learn from reading this novel is that even an original concept can end up being told in a very unoriginal way.

~Urania

Buy it now The Dirty Streets of Heaven (Bobby Dollar)