Probably time to talk about a book

Finally finished Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series. My god it was an effort. Seven books in all, well over 5000 pages. The first two books, King's Dragon and Prince of Dogs, were really enjoyable: good, tight writing and an interesting storyline. But, as with many fantasy series these days, as the series grew so did the number of characters and plotlines so that the story just kept spreading out sideways. Elliott also introduced a religious debate (loosely based on Christianity) that swamped the middle books. Book 5, The Gathering Storm, took me 12 months to read. Book 6, In The Ruins, was a non-event. It could have been completely edited out and no-one would have noticed. The last book, Crown of Stars, continued in that vein for the first half but then ended with a rush of action to quickly tie everything together.
Because the story wandered so much I found myself caring less and less about the characters. The whole religious 'debate' theme left me cold. Quite often it would cause me to just stop reading, particularly as a lot of it was very repetitious. But I persevered and forced myself to finish. I'm not sure why, I think just out of morbid curiosity about how she was going to be able (if she was going to be able) to bring the whole thing to a conclusion. I found that, by the end, there was only one character who I was still interested in. I couldn't have cared less about what happened to the rest of them.
Maybe down the track I might give Kate Elliott another try but, for now, she's off the reading list.

Since finishing I've started three new books:
The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin. Rebus is on TV at the moment and this was just stting on the desk so I thought I'd give it a go. Scottish detective in the gritty no-nonsense style.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. This has been on my TBR list for a while and I managed to get my hands on a copy this week. Not far enough in to it yet to make any worthwhile comment.
Magician by Raymond E Feist. This is one of the biggest selling books in the shop so I want to read it to see what all the fuss is about. So far it's routine fantasy but I'm only about 100 pages in.