Book Review: The Jongurian Mission (Jongurian Trilogy #1) by Greg Strandberg (three stars)
“They seem happy to have more power now, following the Civil War. But I don’t really see how having more power has made their lives any better.”
Could have been an engaging epic fantasy of a farm boy’s introduction to a greater world and a destiny. Protagonist and antagonists well developed.
Next to it was the trade office, where the farmers came to sell their grain each autumn harvest and get price projections on next year’s crop.
Glacial pace. A lot of telling. Describing. Details for the sake of details, not for the sake of the story. Odd words used badly.
Edgyn had the ship skirting the coast half a dozen leagues out.
Lacks verisimilitude: Author exhibits ignorance of economics, farming, sailing, warfare, and geography—especially distances. Based on eighteenth-century mercantile theories of trade and politics. Quaint. Apparently leagues in this world are shorter than three miles—anywhere from a furlong to a mile. These “what’s he talking about?” moments knock the reader out of the spell of the story.
For more times than he could now count Bryn wished again that he had never left Eston.
As a Matter of Fancy 