And yet, time and again I find myself lead astray by the very people who I trust to tell me whether or not a book has qualities that I will like. I picked up Acacia because not only had the author won the Campbell award, but the words of praise were proclaiming him to be a new master of epic fantasy, and rhapsodized about how wonderfully complex his characters were. I am very much in the market for a new-to-me author of epic fantasy with complex characters, and this one also had a shiny cover with a tree on it (I love trees!), so it had to be good.

Apparently I never got the memo that said there's a secret formula to making complex characters. The secret is: "X is a Y but secretly Z." For instance, "Corinn is a beautiful princess but secretly she is a little obsessed with death because of her mother's untimely demise." Almost every single character could be summed up similarly. Internal conflicts are great, and they do build character, but the author seems to have just stopped there. Also, character growth refers to a change brought on by the events of the story, not literally "they were kids but now they are adults."

My main complaints with Acacia are the fact that I found it to be slow paced and boring, largely because Durham indulges in too much internal narration, telling us about characters and what they are thinking, rather than showing us their personality and motivations through their actions. Nearly every chapter starts with a lengthy passage discussing what a character is like, or what they are thinking, before getting to any sort of action that moves the plot forward (note that when I say action, I literally mean taking an action of any sort, not that I expect every chapter to be a chase scene or fight).

At various times, the story would show signs of picking up, or a character would do something that really caught my interest, but soon enough things would return to their regular level of mediocrity. It never got bad enough to make me put it down completely, but it did take me over two weeks to read it. Every now and then I do find myself thinking back to the characters and wondering what happens in the rest of the series, but then I remember how little I enjoyed this book and I decide I will never know.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect to love every book that I read. I know that taste is subjective, and that some people will love things that make me say "meh." But this is an author who not only got vast praise, but who was given a prestigious award for new authors, and yet he can't even follow the "show, don't tell" rule. Are standards in fantasy really that low? Did he win for a book that was 100 times better than this, then get a contract for this series, only to be hit by writer's block, which forced him to churn out something mediocre? I may never know, because I certainly won't be giving any of his other works a try.