Location: United States
Member Since: Nov. 10, 2014

ursulaa

Smashwords book reviews by ursulaa

  • The Tristan Stone (Conclusion of Tristan of Dintagell) on Nov. 29, 2014

    Despite a lot of obvious grammar mistakes (which I'm no expert in, so if I say it's obvious it's pretty obvious), such as almost constantly writing "it's" when it is supposed to be "its" and misuse of capitalization in dialogue - for example, instead of: "My dress is wet," said Isuelt it would be "My dress is wet." Said Isuelt I kept going, because I liked how a lot of the characters are portrayed here, much more complex than they are a lot of the times in novels of Tristan and Isolde. No one was demonized and they were all sympathetic characters. I found the relationship here between Marc and Tristan more fully fleshed out than usual and I found the epilogue quite touching (I would recommend re-reading the first chapter of the first book again after that for any details that may have been missed the first time.) There were also small twists in the details of the tale that I liked - for instance - one of the reasons Marc agrees to marry Iseult at all is because it's one of the conditions required to set Tristan free from Ireland, where he is being held hostage, and that Tristan is betrothed to the other Isolde as part of another contract and quite early into the tale, after Tristan and Iseult meet but before they begin their affair. Other details that were intriguing but that didn't amount to anything much was Tristan's weak eyesight (it seemed it was going to factor into the plot somehow, but it didn't, but I thought it was still was interesting because so often in historical fiction people seem to either have perfect eyesight or are completely blind), and the other bit was Bersules' hatred of Tristan, which was interesting and he was set up as a good villain, but then it all kinda of comes to nothing, because he never reveals why his hatred is so personal. We can guess, but it leaves their last scene feeling kind of anticlimactic. The book tries too hard to describe everything very flowery, but there are some nice turns of phrases here and there. Overall, if you're interested in the legend, I would recommend reading this, for the even-handed treatment of the characters.