Another review: by Poisoned Rationality

"In many, many ways Curse of the Tahiera is a book I love. The way that Gillissen interweaves the importance of the dreams of the characters to their development is wonderful. The world in which the characters inhabit is both familiar, but refreshing. The only jarring sensation I had through the first half was every time Rom or Yldich used one of the made-up words, I had to go to the back [to the glossary] to figure out what it meant. I didn't have a real sense that I would understand the words if I just kept reading through and gleening from the text the meaning.

The story begins with how Rom and Yldich meet. Which is to say, Rom gets into a bloody fight and then meets Yldich while he's recovering and not listening to common sense (which seems to be a thing he does frequently). Yldich is older then Rom, but is the more laid back one. The one who isn't worrying so much about this or that not happening. Rom is rather intense, focusing so keenly on his dreams and what they mean that it consumes him at times. They come from two different races, but don't have trouble communicating.

Occasionally the narrative was a little stiff, but this was translated from another language and even the best translations fall short of the mark. It's often hard to capture the same lyrical quality or tone that an author uses in their original language when translating to English. I see the problem often when reading manga or translated japanese novels--you can't translate it word for word (due to differences in grammar and puncuation) and if you instead translate with the 'gist' of the intent you'll likely miss important clues without even realizing it.

The climax was in fact thrilling. Rom's journey as he connected the pieces in his dreams of the past to the now of the present came together and the choices made left me feeling satisfied. Not fully, I still have a great urge to read the sequel, The Search for Tzanata (due out this autumn according to the author's website) however. "

Read the full review here: http://lastexilewords.blogspot.com/2009/09/book-review-curse-of-tahiera.html