The Mongoliad: The Foreworld Saga, Book 1

Good story - but

This is a really good story with interesting characters. It gives an insight into what people must have felt when faced with the news that the Mongols were coming. I have to take two stars off for the way the story just stops in the middle. It's not really even a cliff hanger, no one climbed a cliff, they were just telling the story and stopped. I think marketing is getting in the way of art here. I'll by the second book because I have faith in the writers and like the production but it's not a strong faith. I'll let you know.

37 of 39 people found this review helpful

terrible ending

What disappointed you about The Mongoliad?

I think anyone who purchased this book should get the next part free, if they want. It didn't come to any conclusion at ALL. I mean did they just run out of paper or was it only suppose to be so many pages long. I'm am used to fantasy names , but this book was extremely hard to follow. Don't waste your time.

Has The Mongoliad turned you off from other books in this genre?

I have listen to other books by multible aurthors (like the Choplin Manuscript = excellent) but this one just did not click.

What three words best describe Luke Daniels’s voice?

I like Luke Daniel's voice but he can't do anything for a bad story to begin with.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

no

21 of 24 people found this review helpful

Book By Committee

Is there anything you would change about this book?

See my remarks below. I expected much more from this book -- or should it be "project"?

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

The dialogue was much too 21st century colloquial in far too many places. While I hate deliberately archaic dialogue, I really don't think anyone in the 13th century in Russia would be saying "OK".

The ending of the book seemed to be simply "we've run out of ideas for the moment, we'll publish the next one when we think of more things to write".

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The narrator was adequate but not inspired. His flat, rather nasal Midwestern twang sorted oddly with the nationalities of the characters. He also mispronounced a number of fairly basic words

Was The Mongoliad worth the listening time?

I guess it is if you are a youngish, male, computer gamer who likes stories which are mainly full of gore and dead people. Fights/battles rehearsed in excruciating detail; most characters fairly cardboard. Not up to Neal Stevenson's standard if compared to Cryptonomicon or the Baroque Cycle.

Any additional comments?

Books written by a committee rarely if ever seem to jell. Raised on Harold Lamb's "March of the Barbarians", which not only told the saga of the Mongolian invasions but caught the atmosphere and flavor of both the Middle Ages and the Far East, this seemed to lack purpose and direction. Could see it marketed as a "dungeons and dragons" computer game in future.

Stevenson is on record as saying that this sort of "interactive" project is the way he thinks books are going to go in the internet age. I disagree, sadly. He's better on his own [sometimes; of late he seems to just churn stuff out, alas.]

38 of 45 people found this review helpful

If Stephenson wasn't listed, would you read it?

I bought this because Stephenson was the first listed author, and I like his other work. The setting of this book is foreign to me-perhaps if I had more knowledge of the Mongol Empire I would have found it a better read.

Stephenson's participation is difficult to detect, and there is some downright painful writing in here. For example (I don't know the exact quote and can't be bothered to backtrack and get the exact quote) there is a section in which a priest is talking to the Pope. The simile used is something like "life had been wrung from him like juice is wrung from a grape." Who wrings a grape?

I speculate that the breaking of this story into several volumes is an effort to obtain more money by encouraging serial purchases. I will not follow this story further, there are too many other good books to listen to.

10 of 12 people found this review helpful

Not the Best

Having listened to Conn Iggulden"s books on the subject, I was expecting a good interpretation of the mongol story by other authors, perhaps with a fantasy twist.
The research may have been good. But the writing was at best mediocre; there was no actual character development; and the reading was also mediocre. As a final insult, the book just ended, without polish or attempt to bring it to any conclusion. Maybe there was a planned next in a series; but if so, I will never know. Overall, my recommendation is to read or listen to Iggulden's far superior books and not waste the credit.

13 of 16 people found this review helpful

Expectations

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I found it to be written a little too much like they are expecting it to be a screen-play. I would have liked less predictable story lines and more developed characters.

What was most disappointing about the authors’s story?

How predictable it was. The foreshadowing was a little too complete. The book contains a grand concept delivered so simply that I was left wanting a lot more depth.

What about Luke Daniels’s performance did you like?

His performance was the only thing that kept me listening on a very long drive.

Do you think The Mongoliad needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

Well yes, the series is obviously incomplete.

Any additional comments?

I love the concept of the book. Many of its individual characters are very interesting, and I still think on their personalities and choices. I feel that some of the ethereal themes of the book were squeezed out of the way so it would appeal to the masses who watch Game of Thrones.

7 of 9 people found this review helpful

Ran Out of Story, Stay Tuned...

Disappointing and abrupt end to this work. The authors did not have the forethought to wrap up the story lines. It appeared as if they hit their contracted number of words per work and decided that was it, we'll finish this up (maybe?) in book #2. The story lines were interesting and imaginative, but poor ending. I expected more out of these authors.

8 of 11 people found this review helpful

Such a Disappointment

Being Hungarian in heritage, I always try historical books that incorporate that heritage.I don't know much about the Mongolian invasion and was hoping this first novel might touch on that. It doesn't. That's OK. The actual storyline, as written, is very confusing.

There is no clear individual to get to know and like. Nor is there a real villian to dislike. Too many undeveloped characters with seemingly disconnected plots. It seems like each author was assigned a character and tried to develop action scenes for that character. Then the editor smashed the storylines together like mashed potatoes. Thus, the story wanders across this book like the Mongols did across the steppes.

Yet there is enough to keep me going. I have Book 2 and will continue there hoping things get better.

Luke Daniels as a narrator is just as effective as the book is written. Just meh.

Not horrible but not great. Just average.

5 of 7 people found this review helpful

Heavy and dull

The collection of writers of this book attracted me. I have generally avoided books by committee but thought, with these writers, this might be interesting and I was attracted by the sale price. I would have been better off not bothering.

The central idea, that a group of warriors might ride off to try to stop the Molgol invasion by assassinating Ogedei Kahn, seemed like a reasonable plot, but I personally found the writing stuffy, boring and reeking of too much of a fantasy novel. It might have been the underlying assumption of a great world-wide conspiracy in a time when getting a message from one part of Europe to another took months, or it might have been the secret society names without any explanation as to what they were, or it might just have been that this book was not for me. I don't know, but I ended up abandoning the effort about half way through the first part.

While I thought the plot was plodding and uninteresting I have to say that the performance was first class. Luke Daniels did such a wonderful job of narrating that I could tell one character from another just by the voice. It did not make the characters any more interesting for me, but he did a first class job and that should be mentioned.

It was not a total loss. I did learn one thing - that I need to stop buying Audible books just because they are on sale at a terrific price.

10 of 15 people found this review helpful

A Find!

???The Mongoliad??? came as a surprise to me. Originating as a ???cloud??? collaboration from a team of noted authors, this alternate history saga of ???The Foreworld??? has apparently been going on in multimedia format for a while (see the mongoliad website). But this book, the first of a trilogy (a trilogy that is apparently already close to complete, which is always a good thing), stands alone as a novel. Describing the newly published book in an Amazon interview, coauthor Mark Teppo says that ???the three volumes of The Mongoliad have been polished, re-structured, and re-edited into the definitive edition of the narrative ??? [that] is the authors' preferred text. ??? We're old school that way. It's done when you put it on the shelf.??? Good news for readers everywhere!

The prose style of this adventure epic combines history-based fiction with the world-building of fantasy and science fiction, with the wordsmithing genius of Neal Stephenson definitely an influence. The first couple of chapters were a little muddled, but once I got the sense and rhythm of the story, the many characters and their strange names fell into place and it became amazingly easy to follow. Feeling the lack of maps, I confess I scanned the Wikipedia entries on the ???Mongol invasion of Europe??? and ???Mongolian Empire??? to gain some context, and found them useful. It???s a fascinating and fast-moving tale, if gruesome and full of cruelty. The Mongols were not kind to the people they conquered or to the cities they overran, usually wiping out both with chilling completeness. They left few survivors in their wake, and the fact that western and Mediterranean Europe (including France, Spain, Italy, the Low Countries and even the British Isles) were spared their onslaught is, I suspect, going to be a big piece of the mosaic this trilogy will create.

Regarding the narration, as I think most people who have listened to the ???Iron Druid??? books will agree, Luke Daniels can read to me anytime.

10 of 15 people found this review helpful