Book Review: A Dance of Blades by David Dalglish

I picked this up during a recent trip to the Library.  It's fairly recent having been published November, 2013.

This is the second in Shadowdance series of books by David Dalglish.  The first is A Dance of Cloaks and the next in the series is A Dance of Mirrors. 

The book center around an ex-thief with a vendetta against the thieves guilds located in the fantasy city of Veldaren.

The paperback version of the book I borrowed from the library runs 387 pages.  I surrendered on page 264.  I found the book to be too "sketchy" for my tastes.  (Other reviewers say fast-paced.  I say sketchy.)

There are just too many potential plot issues that are ignored or treated in a perfunctory manner.  Some of these may have been addressed in the previous book, but an author really shouldn't assume that someone has read a previous work in a series.

Some examples.

The main female character has two suitors.  One of the suitors basically turns out to be the villain in this piece.  He runs the gold mine owned by the woman's family and is apparently using it to finance one of the thief's guilds.  It's run by his brother.  This plot device is quickly introduced, then ignored.

The other suitor?  He first appears on page 39.

He's dead on page 54.

Personally, I find this book reads like the script for the typical action movie blockbuster: shallow charcter development, thin plot development and heavy on the fight scenes.

Heavy emphasis on fight scenes might work well in moves, not so well in writing.