Beyond The Pale

I put this in the "Terribly Written Books" category.A new entry on this 2012 list.There were some initially vague similarities to The Wheel of Time, but that soon changed -- and not for the better.The story started out strong, but somehow everything just grinds to a halt, and I stopped caring about the characters or story. It just sort of dies a slow death, with each of the following books killing the series even more.The characters were two-dimensional and absolutely do not evolve during the course of the series.And the writing. The author tries way too hard with his use of similes. After a while, the book felt to me like it was an unfinished Creative Writing 101 project that's been collectively written with the sole intent of coming up with jarring, awkward similes.There's a ton of inconsistency too when it comes to the story elements. Characters actions are inconsistent from moment to moment -- at one point, they are in charge and confident, and at another point, they are dimwit followers who act out of character. And the Rune Stone, a major plot element, just loses its free will at one point in the story without any reason.It's almost as if the author was suddenly inspired by Edding's The Belgariad and started pumping out characters taken straight from it. Meli is a re-named Polgara, Travis comes off as a less feisty version of Garion, Falken is borrowed from Belgarath, and Beltan is Mandorellan's clone.The world is fairly undefined too. It seems as though the characters just walk and walk around in some vaguely midieval landscape.I have a bit of a problem when, several books into a series, the author suddenly decides to make the main character gay. Now that's fine if this is the case from the start of the series, but when the author suddenly pulls homesexuality out of a hat way into the novel without warning, well that's not quite fair.Frankly, the author has failed to create a believable world or to create an interesting plot that takes you anywhere, with fully fleshed out characters. The whole series lacks any sort of soul too it; all in all, everything from the characters to the world and the plot are wafer thin. If mediocrocy could be celebrated, this series would get an award.