Underlord

As I’ve been revisiting my Will Wight books through Audiobooks, this one broke me. I did a few things I have not yet done in this run through – I skipped the first chapter entirely, as I did not have patience for one of the more boring side stories, and about two-thirds of the way through I switched over from the audiobook to the written novel because I was enjoying the book and wanted to be able to consume it faster. This is the two halves of the Will Wight experience – a few sections that are barely worth reading at all, and a bunch of sections that are truly fun to read in a way that most books are not.

Starting with the first book in the Cradle series, we meet these otherworldly God figures. It’s never all that interesting, but usually the sections are short enough that you can tolerate them and move on with the book. The entire first chapter of this book is an extended look at some other planet that does not feature any character we care about, only here to set some scenery for some book way later in the series. It’s great that White is able to plan that far ahead for the series, but as a reader these are not enjoyable. It just doesn’t belong here. Thankfully, all of this content is condensed to the first chapter, so since I skipped it I can move on and enjoy my day.

The rest of this book is potentially the best novel in the entire series. The main characters are challenged with more well designed antagonists, they all are featured well, and the concept behind their progression includes a fair amount of character development. So, this book reaches the Will Wight ceiling of being a great book and gets an 8.