His Majesty's Elephant Book

Tarr's books have interesting situations and lively characters, but, sheesh, do those characters talk and talk and talk, and, boy, can Tarr drain the life out of every scene. I found myself skimming: the boar hunt, the Big Fight Against the Big Bad at the end. Just pages and pages and pages of text describing every movement and every thought and ... An action scene should have a sense of action, not a sense that the author thinks I should know every single detail.

And a book should have more happening in it than people talking and talking and arguing and arguing (ugh: Tarr apparently subscribes to that old chestnut where people argue with each other because they're in wuv). By the end of the book, I no longer cared a whit about any of the characters, including the elephant. This is my second Judith Tarr; it's going to be my last, even though I own other ebooks by her.

(edit: I see by other reviews that--good grief!--this is intended for teenagers? The main characters are teens, but that doesn't make this a book for younger readers, who demand a lot more action and a much livelier book than this. This is the kind of book I quickly dnf'd as a kid--and then wrote a book report on, pretending I'd read it.)