I give up.

I've been reading this book for 13 days, and I'm only 250 pages in. I normally read at least fifty pages per day, but I found 'Forge of Darkness' such a slog that I found myself reaching for my phone, old videogames, bad movies - anything other than this book.

'Forge of Darkness' tells a sprawling fantasy story set in a sad, broken, used-up world. The sprawl, though, far outweighs the story. There are so many different storylines, all populated with characters with hard-to-recall fantasy-type names, that the book flits from one to the next before the reader can become invested in any of them. The world itself seems to feature three sentient races, but maybe more. I really couldn't tell. Two of them are some kind of gods or faeries, and the most human of them seems vaguely immortal. But the author spends no time actually telling us who's who in the zoo, so to speak. There's no Basil Exposition saying, "Once upon a time there was Race A. They looked like this and did such-and-so. Then Race B came along. They looked different and did something else. And then Race C appeared -- you get the idea." All I could figure out is that one group had tusks.

It's as if the author expected the reader already to know about the history, ethnography, and geography of his fantasy realm, so he didn't bother to explain any of it. Well, I need a little orientation. I need characters I can actually get to know so that I can invest in their stories. I need, well, I need a book that doesn't assume I'm committed to 1800 pages of a trilogy so it can spend 250 pages of scene setting, with no instigating action, stakes, and actual suspense in sight. Basically, I need to be entertained.

A friend recommended this book, so it clearly worked for him. As for me, I'm throwing in the towel. There's too much great stuff out there for me to waste my time slogging through something that isn't working for me.