Jake Bishop's Reviews > The Way of Edan

Before reading it I saw The Way of Edan compared a lot to Lord of the Rings, and Faithful and the Fallen. I see where those are coming from, especially since it is known that Phillip likes Gwynne, and well...more than likes Tolkien. However, I got to say that to me the reading experience is by far the most similar to The Eye of the World, and The Great Hunt. Not The Wheel of Time, just the first 2 where Rand was overwhelmed by the situation, they were running from danger with his best friend, going to inn's, being in danger because chosen one. Getting out of danger because chosen one. With a background story of political tension, and brewing wars between various factions. And some long descriptions of buildings.

This description obviously tells you nothing about how good I think it is, and I am not in any way trying to say that The Way of Edan is an Eye of the World rip off, only that they share a similar vibe.


Also, worth prefacing, that Phillip Chase is a friend, and guess what, he is also an adult. He is not going to get mad at me if I give his book a lower rating, if you think that makes my review less trustworthy you can move on.

To me The Way of Edan was a slightly mixed, but overall positive reading experience. I struggled a bit with the first couple chapters, and it took me some time to get used to the writing, and early on I would sometimes have to reread passages, and found it a bit difficult to get immersed. However I thought the inciting incident really ratcheted stuff up, and my brain adjusted to Phillip's style.

This also brought in one of my favorite aspects of this novel, which is the magic, and supernatural elements. I found the concept of having it connect magic users to the emotions of others to be really unique, and to add a lot to scenes where magic was used, other than it just being cool. Also the execution and writing managed to leave it mysterious and wonderous, without straying into Deus ex Machina.

This book also had a number of plotlines and PoVs, and hopped between them with a deft hand, making sensible PoV hops that added to the story, and to me were not confusing. I found the way the various plotlines came together to be quite satisfying, and Phillip was on multiple occasions able to create tension due to knowledge I had that whichever PoV I was in did not.


Also, I like the dwarves.

One thing that definitely hurt my enjoyment, is just the sheer quantity of descriptive writing. I know Phillip likes descriptive writing, but it definitely hurt the pacing and my enjoyment from the sheer quantity. Hence the comparison to Eye of the World, although if I had to guess an even larger percentage of the word count in this would be dedicated to describing buildings and landscapes. While I can certainly enjoy descriptive books, to me in this novel they took away more than they added, and I sometimes found myself asking what this added to the story. I guess the result was I could picture things decently well, but usually that would be based on a couple individual lines standing out, and my imagination filling in the rest.

I do think Phillip has said that he often enjoys descriptive writing for its own sake, but for me only a couple authors can pull off a page long description of a building that we spend 2 pages in, and make it immersive.

The cast of characters will obviously make or break basically any novel, and I thought there were definitely some interesting ones. The antagonist has PoVs, and he was in my opinion the most interesting character and arc. I see seeds planted on where his character will go, and see him try to continue down his path without doubt, despite doubts best efforts to creep in. One thing that maybe made me slightly less engaged, is that I just wasn't strongly invested in disliking the people I was supposed to hate. There are characters who I can see are bad people, but fail to draw the seething, tangible rage I feel towards many of the genres best antagonists.

I like Dayraven though, I have seen some people say they found him the least interesting, and hey people tend to find Rand the least interesting in Eye of the World, but I like both.

Lastly, the chain mail.....and armored helmets sure seem to get cut through relatively often when non protagonists are wearing them. You wound me Phillip.

Overall though, I still thought the novel was solid, the last act was exciting, and the world well fleshed out. I'm sure people will see me give this a slightly lower score than some of Phillips other friends, and assume they are being dishonest. And if you are thinking of doing that, please rethink your life choices. They are also being honest, guess what, people are not all going to think the same thing about a book.

6/10