New Book Review 40: Gods of the Mountain

gods of the mountain I’ve been keeping fairly quiet on social media for a while lately, and as an author I’ve been effectively silent for several months. However, I’m still reading plenty and I’m still writing plenty, though not as much as I should be. Any writer would tell you the same, I think. None of us write quite as much as we want to, or we should.

At any rate, what I’m posting here today is the fortieth indie book review on this blog, for the fantasy novel Gods of the Mountain by Christopher Keene, the first (and so far only) book of the Cycle of Blades series. I hope to get a few more reviews here during 2018, but I can’t make any promises right now.

Gods of the Mountain is set in an essentially medieval world, like most fantasy, though there are no magical races or classic mythical creatures here. The setting is the repressive Avaani Empire, where most of our characters live in the major city of Tyria. Near Tyria is the eponymous mountain, where a religious sect of magic practitioners called the Lunari worship entities called the Ksai, whom they understand as the source of their magical powers. The Lunari are able to use symbols which they hold in their minds to endow themselves with comic-book-like abilities such as flight, strength, speed, teleportation, and others. The Avaani people distrust the Lunari, and the Lunari view the Avaani as a race of godless ignorant blasphemers.

As the action picks up, an Avaani assassin and mercenary named Kessler appears wielding Lunari powers in a quest for revenge against the empire. He is manipulated from the shadows by a mysterious renegade Lunari, and part of his plan is to train up other outlaws in Lunari magic to join him in his quest. Our protagonist is Faulk, an Avaani soldier-turned-mercenary who is unwillingly trained by Kessler and soon becomes a fugitive of the Avaani law enforcement, embodied in the sadistic High Inquisitor Mullen, a bloodthirsty and crafty man who excels in torture and other unkind practices. When the antics of these rogue magic-users attracts the attention of the Lunari, a pair of Lunari come down from the mountain to rein them in, and in the process attempt to recruit Faulk into their sect. Being a godless Avaani, Faulk is skeptical of their tales of Ksai and devotion and heresy. As these and other events unfold, there are revelations and plots and schemes in the world of humans and the world of gods, culminating in an explosive climax.

Gods of the Mountain had its share of strengths and weaknesses. It had an original plot and some new ideas that I hadn’t seen in fantasy before. The way magic worked was entirely its own, although it reminded me some of the novel Elantris by Brandon Sanderson, and I saw that Keene listed Sanderson as one of his influences, so this is not too surprising. The book does well with heightening mystery and intrigue throughout, and in fact we don’t learn the villain’s identity and motivation until near the very end of the novel. One weakness of the book was the indistinct personalities of the some of the characters. A few of the more important characters spoke and acted essentially the same, and that diminished the reading experience some. The book ends on something of a cliffhanger, being the first book of a planned series. This didn’t bother me, but it might bother some readers. Being an adult fantasy novel, the book also has its share of violence, profanity, and sexual content, so more sensitive readers might want to avoid it for those reasons.

All in all, I enjoyed the book and I’d be curious to see what else this author has out there. Fans of fantasy and people looking for books with less conventional plots are likely to appreciate Gods of the Mountain.

And now once again, my bit of advertisement. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 39: A Keeper’s Tale

A Keepers Tale The thirty-ninth book indie book review I’m doing here is for A Keeper’s Tale: The Story of Tomkin and the Dragon, by J.A. Andrews. Way back in August 2016 I wrote a review for this author’s high fantasy novel A Threat of Shadows, which is one of my favorite indie fantasy novels. If you like, you can find that review here. A Keeper’s Tale is presented as a fable told and retold by people in the world where A Threat of Shadows takes place, and consequently is a little more like a fairy tale than a high fantasy novel.

Our protagonist is Tomkin, the younger and less-favored son of a duke in a dull kingdom called Marshwell. Tomkin is a teenage dork, peevish, too weak to lift a sword, hardly the heroic archetype. He is sent on a quest through two coinciding events: learning that he’s been betrothed to a reputedly shrewish woman, and learning that a dragon has allegedly been devouring local livestock. Before long our brave hero finds himself trapped in a ruined castle alongside a moody dragon named Vorath, a longsuffering kobold named Wink, and a sarcastic young woman whom he calls Mags. The primary plot involves Tomkin’s attempt to escape his predicament, with the supporting characters helping and hindering him in various ways.

Tomkin and Mags are fairly well developed as characters. Thy both have some gaps in their backstories, but they think and act in pretty credible ways. Vorath initially seems like a pretty stereotypical Smaug-esque dragon, but he gets some good development as well. I would have liked to see more development in Wink the kobold, as I was left with a few questions about his personality, motives, and background. That being said, I think it’s to the story’s benefit that there are so few characters. We’re able to get to know those characters without being distracted by keeping track of a wide cast of side characters. Overall I thought characterization was done very well.

For the first half of the novel, everything is pretty light and comedic, and there are notable nods to other mostly light-hearted fantasy works like The Hobbit and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Around the halfway point there is a pretty significant mood shift. Learning more about how Mags and Vorath have come to be in the castle raises the stakes in the story, and it gets to be a little less light-hearted and a little more serious. That being said, the story and Andrews’s writing in general are proudly noblebright fantasy, and the menace stays PG and never quite reaches PG-13 or R. Fantasy fans who favor heavier, grimmer stories might dismiss this more positive fantasy as infantile or pointless, but I appreciate a wide variety of fantasy and thoroughly enjoyed the book. I suppose the target audience might be teenagers and kids rather than adults, but as an adult I liked it, and I think many other fans of the genre would too.

And now once again, the plug. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 38: Casting in Stone

casting in stone This is the first new review I’ve done since September. Working as a substitute teacher and maintaining a handful of other jobs have taken up a fair amount of my time, so I haven’t been writing as much or supporting other indie authors as much as I should. That’s not a great excuse, and I mean to do better in the near future. Now, this latest review (number thirty-eight) is on Morgan Smith’s Casting in Stone. Way back in August 2016 I reviewed Smith’s A Spell in the Country, which is one of the best indie fantasy novels I’ve come across. You can read that review here. Both of these books are in Smith’s high fantasy series The Averraine Cycle, taking place in the same world and referencing some of the same locations and history, but not sharing characters or plot points.

Like A Spell in the Country, Casting in Stone is told from the first person point of view of a tough and fierce warrior, a woman in a medieval-esque land of castles, knights, and dangerous magic. Our hero is Caoimhe, an orphan with notoriously ill luck and a penchant for killing. In a flashback we learn that she served as champion for a young duke named Einon during a period of power struggle and court intrigue in the town of Rhwyn. There were a lot of court intrigues in the story, and I regret to say that I couldn’t very well keep up with all of them. The main story was centered on Caoimhe’s investigation into a curse that she believes has been plaguing her, and the ways that the people around her manipulate her to keep her ignorant of the curse or help guide her to discovering the source of the curse.

There’s some action in the story: descriptions of one-on-one battles between champions, descriptions of skirmishes against feral supernatural wolves, battle against wicked supernatural entities. With the descriptions of fighting and the daily routines of being a soldier in this kind of grim pre-industrial fantasy world, the author spares no detail. The weapons and processes and fighting techniques are elaborated in a way that reveals how much time Smith researched her source material, creating a very believable setting. This was the case in A Spell in the Country as well, and I’m again impressed and inspired by it. In my own fantasy work, I would do well to imitate that commitment to research. That being said, there were long stretches of the book where things moved slowly, and where I really wanted to see more things happening. Where the story was interesting, it was great, but there were stretches when it dragged on.

As someone who appreciates quality high fantasy, I definitely appreciated this book, and I think other fans of the genre will appreciate it as well. I’m keeping an eye out for other works in The Averraine Cycle.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 36: Demorn: Soul Fighter

demorn 3 The next indie book review I’m doing is for David Finn’s sci-fi fantasy space opera all-around actionfest, Demorn: Soul Fighter. This is the third book of the Demorn series, and I reviewed the first and second of them last year. Those reviews can be found here and here.

As a quick refresher on the premise, Demorn, the Wandering Princess of Swords, is a witty (and sometimes nihilistic) young woman who has time-travelled, space-travelled, and dimension-travelled throughout a multiverse that’s crumbling under the weight of imminent cosmic calamity. She is an extraordinary fighter, making use of guns, fists, a supernatural flaming katana, and a variety of magical objects gifted to her by gods and other entities in her wide and varied travels. She has been a priestess, arena fighter, and presently a mercenary. She also really loves comic books, and is good friends with Frank Sinatra, who happens to be a leader in a resistance against cosmic baddies.

Each of the Demorn books has had a common difficulty. In their freneticism and dimension-jumping and panache, they are confusing as hell. They’re all packed with action which is so well-written and so detailed that it’s a beauty to read, but keeping track of the plot is always challenging. In Soul Fighter, a catastrophe called the Fracture Event has torn apart the multiverse, erasing past timelines and sending beings from one dimension into another, wreaking all kinds of havoc. Members of a cultish organization called the Triton Corporation initiated the Fracture Event for diabolical purposes involving wicked cosmic gods (fans of H.P. Lovecraft will recognize the concept). Demorn starts in a Las Vegas-like metropolis called Bay City, where she competes in Soul Fight tournaments. Each fighter carries several mystical skulls which contain a soul, enabling them to fight and die multiple times. The loser of a fight has their soul-skulls taken away by a Death Banker, shadowing persons with their own motives and allegiances. From this setting, Demorn turns from gladiator to assassin to hunt down one Death Banker who means to release a cross-dimensional plague on the city. This sets her on a path to encounter an old friend and sometimes enemy, Iverson, an operative and detective-like character with whom she embarks on a quest to find the Reset Pyramid, which will enable them to reset time and avert the Fracture Event. Along the way they encounter former friends and rivals and lovers (Demorn, I nearly forgot to mention, is a lesbian), including Demorn’s brother Smile, her former co-priestess Toxis, her former lover Winter, the powerful warriors Wolf and Wrecking Ball, and the white-collar foes within the Triton Corporation. This book also has a brief appendix to help keep track of all the characters, factions, and magical items in the series.

I can’t stress enough that despite how confusing these books are, I love them. Each of them has been an incredibly fun read, and I’d highly recommend them for fans of sci-fi and fantasy. Reflecting on the way the stories work, I see a lot of influence from comic books especially. With the variety of worlds and scenarios and the vivid descriptions, I’ve wondered if the books might be enriched if they were in fact graphic novels instead of prose novels. If the author ever does make a graphic novel of the series, I would be excited to read it, and I certainly look forward to the release of the fourth book in the series, titled Demorn: Ultimate Fate.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 33: The General’s Legacy: Inheritance

general 1 I’ve been taking a break from blogging and reviews for a little while, but I mean to get back into it now. The next book I’m reviewing is The General’s Legacy: Inheritance by Adrian G. Hilder, the first of the ‘General of Valendo’ series. The series (which so far includes just two books) is high/epic fantasy, set in a medieval-style world of kings and knights and wizards.

As explained in the prologue, the land of Valendo is the neighbor and sometimes enemy of the land of Nearhon. The heroic general Garon once fought against the invading people of Nearhon with the aid of the warrior Quain and the mage Zeivite. The opposing country fought using supernatural monsters called Rippers, summoned by a wicked mage named Magnar. Garon and his companions defeated the invaders and brought peace to the land, and the book’s main narrative begins decades later when Nearhon begins showing signs of new aggression. The heroes of the former war are now gray and elderly veterans, training the new generation for the possibility of another war. The main character is Cory, the grandson of Garon, who becomes romantically involved with Julia, the princess of Nearhon, with the hopes of their union helping to keep the peace between their lands. The story sort of crawls along with that plot for a while, until things pick up when Magnar manages to bewitch a prince of Valendo, Pragius, transforming him into a necromancer who raises an army of burning undead skeleton soldiers to conquer Valendo. This is the most prominent use of magic in the book, and for that I suppose a reader might choose to categorize the book as dark fantasy.

I don’t want to give too serious of spoilers for any of my readers who might want to look into this book later, but one peeve I have with this book is its lack of resolution. It ends with a cliffhanger, and for me the narrative arc felt very incomplete. Readers have different opinions about cliffhangers of course, and some readers wouldn’t be bothered by it. The book had a neat premise for me, and that was a strength for it. Lack of originality is an issue I’ve seen with a lot of indie/self-published fantasy, and this particular book had a story that I haven’t seen before, so I was pleased with that.

One persistent issue I had with the book was the way that it used metaphor and personification. It’s good for writing to be descriptive, but this book used a lot of descriptions that didn’t make very much sense and overall diminished the quality of the book. There were also a fair number of typoes and editing errors throughout the book. Of course, this happens with self-published work and I’m certainly in no position to condemn.

To wrap this up, I’ll say that The General’s Legacy: Inheritance will appeal to fans of the genre, and is a promising first work for a fantasy series. I found it enjoyable.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 32: Shining Ones: Legacy of the Sidhe

shining-ones The next book I’m reviewing here is Shining Ones: Legacy of the Sidhe, a modern fantasy novel by Sanna Hines. The book takes place in the 21^st century, primarily in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, and draws heavily on the legend and mythology of that part of the world for its fantasy elements.

In the book’s backstory, the magical races of the Danann and the Formorians have been at war for centuries, a war which has taken place over a few different parallel dimensions and which has employed magical weapons and strategies which have shown up in our world’s mythologies in various ways. Characters such as Merlin (of the Arthurian legends) and Finn Mac Cool (of Irish legend) were and still are immortal players in this conflict, and legendary items such as the sword Excalibur and the Four Treasures of Dagda (Sword, Spear, Cauldron, and Stone) have all played roles in this conflict. I’m not especially familiar with this particular area of mythology, but I can imagine somebody else really geeking out over it.

The story gets set into motion when a teenage girl named Lia is kidnapped by Formorians, who have plans to use her in their quest to discover the secret behind Danann immortality. Lia’s father, Sam, has to set out on a quest to save her, with the help of the Danann woman Tessa, her nephew Cory, a dog named Cu, and several other characters who all have some connection with the ongoing conflict. Tied up in all of this are teleportation portals, ancient temples, and a ritual involving the alignment of three asteroids in the shape of the mystical triskelion symbol.

I recognize that this book’s worldbuilding is excellent. It created a believable and detailed world by merging together disparate mythologies, real-world geography, and science. I was impressed with this. That being said, I had a lot of difficulty keeping track of who the characters were. I know that some were ordinary humans and some were of the magical races, but in terms of the way they interacted with each other, they weren’t very distinct. In the final quarter of the book some of the mysteries about the different characters’ pasts and connections were revealed, and in that section I was able to see clearly how the characters were different, how their different backgrounds had led them to play the role that each had played in the story. But, there were at least a dozen other characters besides those I’ve named here who all were important yet indistinct until the last quarter, and this was a problem for me. Having finished the book, I feel like if I reread it knowing the ending I would be able to get more out of it, and appreciate the story more.

Overall, it was an enjoyable (if confusing) read, a fantasy work not quite like any that I’d read before. I should note, though, that the book is written for adults, not children. It does have some profanity and a fair amount of strong sexual innuendo and implied (if not totally descriptive) sex scenes which most parents probably wouldn’t want their children or young teenagers reading.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

As a final note, I might not be able to post reviews to this blog as frequently as before, as I’m working a lot now and devoting a lot of time to writing my second book, Tales of Cynings Volume II. Reviews here may come every two weeks, or even less often.

New Book Review 30: Stormwielder

The thirtieth book I’ve reviewing here is Stormwielder, the first of the Sword of Light trilogy by Aaron D. Hodges. Based on the information given about the world in which the book is set, the genre could be epic/high fantasy, but since this first book was only concerned with a small number of characters and events, I’m more inclined to simply call it medieval fantasy for now.

As we learn in the first chapters of the book, the protagonist is a young man named Eric who is cursed with a magical connection to the weather. Anytime he gets upset or angry, storms and lightning fill the air around him, wreaking havoc. His inability to control prevent this reaction causes an entire city to be burned up by lightning strikes, causing Eric to flee from the vengeful survivors of the city, who believe him to be a demon. As he flees, Eric is aided by an old man named Alistair, who is eventually revealed to be a ‘magicker’ (the term this author uses for characters who might otherwise be called wizards). Alistair mentors Eric in the control and use of his magical powers and guides him through many dangers and perils with the goal, eventually, of saving the world from ominous forces led by the dark lord Archon, who seeks to take control over it.

Now, I will readily admit that this book uses some very common clichés. The teenager whose superpowers make him a danger to others could come right out of an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The wise old wizard mentor has been played out in Gandalf, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander, and so on throughout fantasy culture. The power-hungry magical dark lord has likewise been seen dozens of times in Sauron, Voldemort, Arawn Death-Lord, and others. Much of the book’s content has been done many times before. However, it did have a few concepts that I hadn’t seen before, such as the particular way that magic works in this world. I can’t explain that here without giving major spoilers, but it was unique.

There were also a lot of typos throughout the work. I’ve come to generally expect that of self-published novels, having spent a year reading them, but it still always irritates me. Apart from that, many aspects of the book’s plot relied on plot twists which I thought came rather abruptly and clumsily. With a good plot twist, the reader can see in retrospect how the story led up to the twist, but with the few plot twists that this book had, I got the impression that they were just dropped into the story without any lead-up. There was also a romantic arc which I didn’t find convincing or necessary, but of course different people will have different preferences about that.

I don’t want to criticize too much though, because I did enjoy the book. As a fan of the fantasy genre, I thought it was a fun read and I’m sure other fans of the genre will think the same. It’s also more light-hearted than something like, say, A Song of Ice and Fire. There wasn’t any profanity, the violence was at times descriptive but still generally PG-13, and there wasn’t any explicit sex. There was implied sex, but not explicit. I think parents could allow their teenage kids to read this book without too much concern.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 29: SciFan Magazine January 2017

scifan The next book review I’m doing is a little different than the previous ones. I’m reviewing the January 2017 edition of SciFan Magazine, a monthly digital magazine designed to showcase current and upcoming independent authors. The editor is Richard M. Mulder, whose work I hope to review at a later date. There were thirteen stories/excerpts in the magazine, and I will address each of them here.

The first, ‘Octov’s Rise to Ainoren’ by Dawn Chapman, is an excerpt from the novel The Secret King: Lethao, which I reviewed on this blog here. Chapman’s work is excellently written, with strong detail and description and otherworldly characters who are familiar enough for the reader to empathize, yet whose otherworldly attributes and powers create a sense of wonder while reading. This particular excerpt is full of action and intrigue, and I liked it.

The second, ‘Séance on Death Row’ by Douglas Kolacki, is a short horror story in which a group of people, including a murderer, hold a séance to speak with the murderer’s victim. It was an older style of horror, relying heavily on implication and imagination, with dread permeating the story and with the horror stemming from forces beyond the grave which may be seen but not fully understood. It reminded me of Edgar Alan Poe’s work. I liked it.

The third, ‘The Tot of Wonder’ by John Taloni, is a much more lighthearted and goofy tale of a superhero father who lives with his non-super wife and his super-powered toddler son. There’s not a whole lot to it, but I think it’s geared more toward a young audience. It felt a little out of place in this magazine, but as a work for children I suppose it’s fine.

The fourth, ‘Miss Soames’ by Kyle Hemmings, was an odd one. I can’t say much about it without completely spoiling the story, but I didn’t like it very much. The prose was okay, but the plot was kind of nonsensical, a sort of bait-and-switch horror story that was so busy trying to surprise the reader that it forgot to be scary.

The fifth, ‘Orlok’s Song’ by David Castlewitz, was my favorite in the magazine. In this short story, there is a sentient species called the Peet (animal-like beings) who have been driven from their forest homes by human enterprise. Orlok is the father of a family that tries to survive in the new concrete forest of city slums. The writing in it was beautiful, and the story was brief but excellent in its narrative and conclusion. I’d definitely recommend this one.

The sixth, ‘Voices Beneath the Ice’ by Matthew McKiernan, is a sci-fi story with horror elements involving a trio of astronauts who land on Europa (a moon of Jupiter) and begin to find strange reasons to hate each other. I liked the concept a lot, but some of the prose needed work. I think this story has a lot of potential, and could be really great if some more time was given to it.

The seventh in the magazine is an excerpt from the book Secret of the Old Ones by Blaise Corvin. Its genre is given as LitRPG Sci-Fan™, in which the real world and the world of gaming are both important to the narrative. The only issue I have with the excerpt is that the character never seemed to really be in danger, but since it’s just an excerpt of a larger work, I’m sure there will be more conflict and excitement later in the story. I really liked this excerpt, and I’ll probably read the book at some point.

The eight is also an excerpt, titled ‘The Stirring’ by Jaren Fleming. It was something like Christian creationist science fiction, about a planet that serves God (here called The Father) at war with gooey alien beings that serve Satan. The whole excerpt was nothing but combat, and the writing was good, but I hope there is character development and more fleshing-out of the story in the larger work. I wasn’t a huge fan of the premise, but I can imagine other people liking it quite a lot.

The ninth was ‘Stormguard: The Invisible War’ by Tom Fallwell. It was another case of Christian-themed action sci-fi. I can’t say much about it without spoiling the whole story, but it starts with a man waking up in a crater with no memory of who he is or where he came from. The writing was okay, but I thought the premise was kind of a cliché. This was an excerpt of a larger work as well, but I probably won’t seek out the larger work.

The tenth, ‘Spacejacking’ by Russell Hemmell, seems like it may be an excerpt from a larger work, but it was unclear to me. It’s a futuristic tale of an alien abduction during space exploration, and the subsequent consequences. Again, I can’t say a lot without giving away the entire story, but I liked this one. It had some interesting and unusual ideas in it, and if it is part of a larger work I’d like to see where the story goes.

The eleventh story, ‘The Brat and the Other Country’ by David Perlmutter, was a real oddball. The premise was similar to the film ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’, if that film was a story about superheroes rather than a detective story. In the story, the cartoon characters of Earth actually live on another planet, and the main character is a superhero human who works alongside superhero cartoon characters. I can imagine other people really loving the premise, but it was just a bit too much of a stretch for me.

The twelfth story, ‘In the Hot Mists’ by John A. Frochio, is a steampunk tale about an airship race in which one airship has an unfair advantage because it’s crewed by extraterrestrials. Strange as this premise is, I liked it. The writing was good, it put a new spin on a familiar story, and I think lots of other people would enjoy the story too.

The last story (good job for sticking with me this long!) is ‘The Keystone Islands: Portals of the Grave’ by Lander Allen. It’s the first three chapters of a larger work, a soft sci-fi work set in a universe where Earth is a cultural center resented by the other planets. The tetrapath infection turning its victims into horrific monsters, and the protagonists have come from who-knows-where and are trying to figure out their past in the midst of this plague. It’s well-written and very intriguing, and I’d like to see where the story goes.

So, those are the thirteen stories from the January 2017 edition. I expect to review later editions of the magazine in this blog as well, as it seems like a great way to see at a glance what’s going on in the indie fantasy and sci-fi community.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 28: The Breath of Aoles

aoles-cover The next book I’m reviewing in Alan Spade’s The Breath of Aoles, the first book in the Ardalia trilogy. The genre is fantasy, although the other books of the trilogy may expand the world and events to something more like epic or high fantasy. It takes place in a fantasy world of impressive ambition. Most fantasy authors use real-world fauna and flora interspersed with more fantastic and mythological creatures, but in this book every plant and animal was an invention of the author. There was none of the humans and dwarves and elves that we often in fantasy either. The (((SPOILERS IN THIS AND THE NEXT PARAGRAPH)))main character is of a four-fingered three-nostriled species called hevelens, which share their world (which has two moons) with the rock-like krongos race and the telephathic malians.

Our protagonist, Pelmen, is a teenage hevelen who lives a miserable life in the city of Durepeaux, working in his demanding and controlling father’s tannery. When Pelmen runs away, a misadventure with fire-casting sorcerers called crimson shamans brings him back to his city him to live with his bitter old uncle Xuven while attempting to learn the art of hunting. When Pelmen’s friend Teleg disappears under similar circumstances, Pelmen and Xuven assume that he has been kidnapped by crimson shamans as Pelmen nearly was, and they set off on a mission to rescue him. The mission takes them through a variety of places and adventures before they finally reach their destination: a fortress on a volcano, the center of operations for the sinister crimson shamans. (((END SPOILERS)))

If you take this story and you strip away the unique creatures and terrains, it’s a fairly standard journey narrative. We’ve seen protagonists grow and learn over the course of a long journey in hundreds of stories before. Frodo and Samwise do it, Abraham and Sarah do it, Sal Paradise and Dead Moriarty do it, Lolita and Humbert Humbert [*shiver*] do it, it’s very a common theme. This is not necessarily a bad thing. This type of story is popular because it works, as long as it’s written well. This particular book is written well. The mystery and danger of the quest keeps the reader engaged, and the flashiness of the fantastical world keeps the reader interested. It’s a good fantasy novel, unlikely to convert non-fans of the genre but certainly enjoyable for the established devoted.

I do have to remark that the book is slow. There are a handful of exciting bits in the journey, but there is also an awful lot of walking and talking. The author’s creation of unique animals and plants for this book’s world is ambitious, but frequently it was also confusing. When the characters are interacting with their nidepoux and melepeks, their beasts of burden, I don’t know what to visualize. Occasionally descriptions of them would cut off the natural flow of a paragraph, and even with the description I still feel more lost than I would if the characters just uses horses and oxen. There was also a brief romantic arc to the story which seemed, to me at least, out of place. I didn’t think it contributed to the narrative much and overall it didn’t seem very credible. Readers can of course form their own judgments on that.

Overall, I was glad to have read it. I think the novel is a worthwhile contribution to the genre, and the ending left me with enough curiosity that I will probably get the next book in the trilogy (titled Turquoise Water) to see where the adventure goes next.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 26: The Final Warden

the-final-warden-cover For my twenty-fifth book review in this blog and first book review of 2017, I’m reviewing The Final Warden, the first book in the epic fantasy series ‘Gifts of Vorallon’ by Thomas Cardin. The world in this book is close to something out of J.R.R. Tolkien or R.A. Salvatore, with humans living in alliance with elves and dwarves while threats to their world manifest in the forms of ogres, trolls, and demons. It’s a familiar epic/high fantasy type of world, but it was well executed here.

The protagonist of the novel is Lorace, a young man who awakes one day with ritualistic scars on his body and no memory of where he’s come from. In this world many people have a particular ‘gift’, which could just as easily be called a ‘power’ or ‘ability’. As the story progresses Lorace discovers his own gift, which he calls ‘sight’, the power to see within his mind places far from his location. In the context of the fictional world these gifts are said to be given by various gods, worshipped by the humans, dwarves, and elves together. Lorace is in possession of a mystical artifact called the godstone, sacred to the gods (naturally). With the aid of humans from the city of Halversome and dwarves from the city of Vlaske K’Brak, Lorace works to recover his memory and discover why it was lost. Along the way he becomes drawn into a war between the peoples of this world and demons from the realm of Nefryt, whose ravages threaten to destroy the world city by city.

The strongest aspect of this story is the quality of its worldbuilding. Within the first few pages, the amount of detail and complexity to the setting blew me away. The details of the world came out naturally, through character interactions and through comfortably brief narrator’s exposition. I was impressed with it, and I hope that I can come close to doing as well in my own work. The plot was at some points plodding and it took some time to get set up to certain key events, but I wouldn’t say I was bored with it. The book is relatively short, just over 200 pages, so for me it was a quick read overall.

There were several typos throughout the book, such as using “–ing” when “–ed” is meant and misusing apostrophes frequently. Given the overall quality of the rest of the story, this was strange to me. Apart from that, the story ends on something of a cliffhanger. Lorace’s main story arc is completed, but the arc of another character, a demonic entity called the Devourer, is left unresolved. This book is the first of three, so I may well get the next in the series to see what becomes of the Devourer. Cliffhangers are an annoyance to many readers, but the fact that the main arc of the story was resolved satisfied me in this regard.

The last comment I want to make on this book is that it fits one fantasy category that I’ve been hearing a lot about lately: Noblebright. The opposite of GrimDark fantasy, Noblebright is generally positive and optimistic. Heroes are heroic and villains are defeatable. This may make for more predictable storytelling, but it also provides some comfort for many readers who’ve felt lost with the recent trend that’s been popularized by ‘A Game of Thrones’ and its imitators. Fans of Noblebright fantasy and fans of more tradition epic fantasy will enjoy this book, and I’m pleased to say that I did.

Now, once again, my bit of promo. If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

This post was originally featured on cwbookclub.com.