A friend at work let me borrow Raymond E. Feist's Talon of the Silver Hawk because he said I would enjoy it. Despite this being a fairly by-the-numbers fantasy story, I did like the plot and the main character. At its core, this is just a basic revenge story about a boy who becomes a man who is a great warrior and all that. It's still a fun read.

The story begins like way too many fantasy stories. There's this young boy who is out in the woods away from the village when he sees smoke on the horizon and returns home to find this village is being overrun by marauders. By the time it is all over, the village is destroyed and everyone in it killed except for this boy named Talon. He then winds up in the company of some wizards who help him out and train him for a greater mission that ultimately involves Talon identifying the people who destroyed his village and family. And of course Talon must kill them all.

If you ever saw the movie The Beastmaster, the basic plot is kind of the same, though Talon doesn't talk to animals and Tanya Roberts doesn't appear topless. You have this young boy who discovers his own self-worth and goes through some training to find out what he's capable of doing, and he is a natural when it comes to combat. The author made Talon a likable guy who is angry but not too angry, and his innocence as he goes from boy to man is worthy of some empathy.

I thought the author wrote this story with a fair balance of action and intrigue. The novel begins and ends with a good bit of violence, plus there's a brief scene at a gladiator-like tournament, but most of the story focuses on Talon as he learns the ways of the world and is conditioned to step into the larger role that will allow him to fulfill his destiny. Talon isn't fleshed out all that well in that he's like too many other heroic figures from other fantasy stories.

The setting for this is based around a world that the author created many years back and it briefly references Krondor and some other characters from past series. I have not read those books, but am somewhat familiar with them. Although Talon hangs out with a bunch of magicians, there is very little magic use at the forefront of the story, and it never goes into much detail as far as how magic works. The same goes for all the D&D type monsters. There's mention of wyverns and some other creatures, but this book is mainly just about human characters.

Even though it wasn't particularly original, I still enjoyed reading Talon of the Silver Hawk. It was interesting enough that I plan to go ahead and read the next two books in this series. I've always heard of Raymond E. Feist, but had never read any of his work until now. I may have to check out some of his earlier novels once I finish this trilogy.

Recommended: Yes