Benjamin Ashwood
Benjamin Ashwood by A.C. Cobble sets out to take a bunch of disparate characters on a road trip across a big and complex imaginary world. It succeeds, but not in a particularly subtle or elegant way.
Most of the action takes place in side quests.
Big blocks of exposition come at you front and centre and the pacing suffers because of it. At times it was a struggle just to keep dragging myself forward through the text. Also, though the action is certainly plentiful, it often felt contrived. Despite the length of this book, the actual story doesn’t move along all that much and the characters hardly grow and develop. Most of the action takes place in side quests.
Worst of all, I found the main character a little implausible. He repeatedly embarks on wise and perceptive internal monologues in which he accurately predicts the feelings and actions of others. In the very next sentence, he’ll act like an incompetent and bumbling country bumpkin with no understanding of the world around him.
The primary redeeming feature was that the twists were all quite original and refreshing. Though you can predict when they are about to arrive, they generally turn out to be something quite different to the standard tropes of the fantasy genre. This, more than anything else, kept me reading to the end.
A somewhat inelegant 3 out of 5 stars for A.C. Cobble. It has the potential to be a 4+ but there are just too many speed bumps and pot holes for my liking.
Please leave a short message to let me know if you found my review helpful, or at least interesting.
Even better, if you are already familiar with this, or any other books from the Benjamin Ashwood series, let me know if you agree with my assessment or if you think I have misrepresented something, but do remember NO SPOILERS! We don’t want to ruin it for others.
Find out more about A.C. Cobble and his books at: