Year-End 99 Cent Promotion

pic of cover This has been a really interesting year for me. I was very happy to publish Tales of Cynings Volume I this year, and the feedback I’ve been getting has been so encouraging! Using this blog as a way to connect with other authors has also been good, and I’m pleased with the people I’ve met and the interactions I’ve had. These book reviews will definitely continue in 2017. I’ve made good progress on Tales of Cynings Volume II as well, and I’m excited with some of the new storylines and ideas that I’m working with there. However, I can’t give a clear date on when the book will be done. It depends on a lot of factors. I’d like to say before 2018, but we’ll just have to see.

Now, in celebration of the end of this year, I’m making the digital version of my book just 99 cents until New Years Day! The deal ends at midnight, and I won’t run another like it for a good long while. If you’ve enjoyed the content on this blog, try out the book! I’m doing a lot of authors a favor with this blog, and some return on that would be greatly appreciated. Link to the book is here.

Thanks for reading!

New Book Review 24: Seed of Scorn

The twenty-fourth book I’m reviewing on this blog is Aaron-Michael Hall’s novel Seed of Scorn, the second of her epic fantasy series Rise of Nazil. I reviewed the first of the series, Secret of the Seven, in a previous post which may be read here. As I noted in the earlier review, this series has some representations of sexual assault. Readers who have suffered from traumatic experiences or are sensitive about these subjects should abstain from this series.

The last book [[[[SPOILERS]]]] concluded with a war to free the land of Faelondul from the tyrannical rule of the city of Nazil, whose inhabitants worshipped fascist gods and treating humans as slaves. The good Nazilian warrior, Pentanimir Benoist, has become the new ruler of Nazil, the seven true gods have revealed themselves to the land, and a new age of peace has apparently begun. As this book begins, unrest is growing among the Nazilians who favored the old order. There is talk of revolt against Pentanimir and restoration of the strict racial hierarchy of the past. In the meantime spiritual enemies of the seven gods are reaching out to make an invasion of Faelondul, pulling hapless Nazilians under their power. The air is filled with palace intrigue and dark omens.

There is a lot going on and a lot of potential for excitement, but one thing that this book has in common with the previous one is that it moves at a glacial pace. The book is over 500 pages long, well over half of the pagespace is devoted to characters discussing the events of the previous book and characters developing their romantic relationships. In the previous book a lot of space was dedicated to graphic description of torture and rape, and this book has much less of that. It is easier on the stomach, but (and I hate to say this) for long stretches I thought it was kind of boring.

Now, to be clear, the relationships and interactions between characters were quite complex, and written very well. If I was coming to this book with the intent of reading romance, I might be thrilled with this. But, I came to it as a work of epic fantasy. Romance epic fantasy could be a genre that I’m just not familiar with, but if so it seems a very niche group, possibly someplace where fans of George R.R. Martin and fans of Nicholas Sparks overlap. I am a fan of George R.R. Martin, but romance stories bore me. This is not at all to say that the book was badly written, simply that it wasn’t for me.

On the topic of sexual assault, this book had one major deviation from the previous book and from many works of fantasy in general. In the few sexual assaults that happen in this book, the victims are male. It’s a bold move which carries an entirely different set of implications and power dynamics than the alternative, and it moves the plot forward in different ways.

Really, I think this book and this series is likely to be a love-it-or-hate-it affair for most readers. I can imagine other readers loving it. I’ve dedicated a lot of time and effort into getting this far in the series, and I haven’t yet decided if I’ll go on to the third book, Piercing the Darkness. I might, just to see what becomes of the events set up in this one. Fans of both romance and epic fantasy will enjoy this book, though perhaps not fans of romance and fantasy respectively.

Now as always, my bit of promo. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here: New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8–New Book Review 9 –New Book Review 10–New Book Review 11–New Book Review 12–New Book Review 13–New Book Review 14–New Book Review 15–New Book Review 16–New Book Review 17—New Book Review 18–New Book Review 19–New Book Review 20–New Book Review 21 -New Book Review 22–New Book Review 23

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.

New Book Review 23: Cthulhu Armageddon

cth The twenty-third book I’m reviewing on this blog is Cthulhu Armageddon by C.T. Phipps. It’s billed as a post-apocalyptic western, but I’d say calling it a western is a stretch. It’s a fantasy action thriller set in a desert wasteland, conceptually closer to a story like Mad Max than a story like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

To really have context for this novel, you need at least a cursory knowledge of the works of H.P. Lovecraft, whose popular stories include The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, and my personal favorite The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Lovecraft stories and mythos contain the idea that in the sea, underground, and in the far reaches of space are monstrous alien gods who will someday return to power and destroy humanity. Cthulhu Armageddon is a post-apocalyptic action novel based around the idea that in the future, Lovecraft’s gods and monsters (his specific gods and monsters, here with the same names and aspects that they have in Lovecraft’s works) have risen and wreaked havoc upon the earth. Their ravages have turned the world into a hellish place, where the surviving “civilized” humans fight for survival alongside rabid cultists, mutant monsters, and the terrible gods themselves.

Our protagonist, John Henry Booth, is one of the surviving humans in a group called the Remnant. He is a trained and tenacious soldier who struggles through shaky alliances and bitter enmities with monsters and humans in his quest for revenge against the mad wizard Doctor Alan Ward, a former scientist who believes the only way to survive with the gods is to become as monstrous as them. By his side throughout the story is his mutant friend Richard, cultist and former lover Katryn, his teammate Jessica, a professional torturer named Mercury, and a wide-eyed little girl named Jackie who’s seen entirely too much brutality for her age.

This isn’t the first brutish post-apocalyptic novel I’ve reviewed on this blog, but within that genre I think this is the best one. The premise may sound schlocky, a little too close to fan-fic perhaps (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it does have a poor reputation), but the quality of the writing here is impressive. For the most part it’s smooth, well-paced, and strikingly professional. Especially excellent were the book’s action scenes, of which there were many. These were simply incredible. Some of the characters were a little clichéd, a little stereotyped post-apocalyptic warrior, but the central characters had a lot of depth and wisdom to them, much more than you would expect in an action adventure like this.

There are a few places in the book where a sentence was confusingly structured or where the wrong word was used (‘grizzly’ when the author meant ‘grisly’, for example), but these were rare and the book’s strength far outweigh this small weakness. It is also worth noting that while this book takes ideas and personages from Lovecraft, it is not meant to be modeled on Lovecraft’s work. In Lovecraft, the atmosphere is full of dread and existential horror, carried forward and permeating the narrative through the terror, disgust, or madness of the characters. The characters in Cthulhu Armageddon do have terror and disgust and madness, but they also have humor and love and jealousy and anger. They crack wise while they crack skulls, and frequently they spit in the face of death as opposed to cowering like a Lovecraft character would. This isn’t a horror novel. It’s an action adventure fantasy novel, and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one.

For potential readers, it is worth noting that the book has profanity and sex and (if this post hasn’t already made it clear) lots and lots of pulpy violence, so it’s not recommended to sensitive readers. I got a lot of fun out of it, and can definitely recommend it to fans of action, sci-fi, and especially the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft.

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.

New Book Review 21: Murder in Absentia

murder-in-absentia The next book I’ll review is Assaph Mehr’s novel Murder in Absentia. This book is a mystery set a fantasy world modeled very closely on the real-world Roman Empire, with the addition of mythological beasts and magic to add Fantasy to the book’s genre. It’s the first of the series Felix the Fox, named for the protagonist. As this book was of exceptional quality, I’m looking forward to the next in the series.

Felix the Fox, as he is professionally known, is a detective. He’s trained in the past as a soldier and as an incantator (the equivalent to a wizard in this world), but his profession is solving cases for high-profile citizens of Egretia, the quasi-Roman society of this book. When the son of a wealthy and influential merchant dies under strange and supernatural circumstances, Felix takes a contract to discover the cause of the young man’s death. This investigation brings Felix into the midst of a dangerous conspiracy of wicked incantatores in which any mistake could cost him his life. Despite his exotic setting Felix is not so different from other detective characters I’ve read. He’s intelligent and resourceful, he’s very disciplined about his work, and he has his own set of insecurities and vices. The supporting characters include his nearly-mad friend and informant Abraxus, the tough barbarian Borax who serves as his bodyguard, his cheeky housekeeper Dascha, and the various soldiers, incantatores, prostitutes, and other residents of Egretia who help or hinder him on his search. Most of these characters were conveyed very well, though I was a little disappointed that there weren’t a lot of female characters serving a purpose beyond romance or sex (Dascha being the exception).

The strongest aspect of the story was its setting. As I’ve said, Egretia is a fantasy version of Rome, and the writing makes it clear that the author worked carefully to keep his details authentic. We’re used to seeing fantasy novels modeled on a modern misunderstanding of the Middle Ages (my own work is done this way, I’m afraid), but this setting was something different. It was extremely detailed, from the social ranks of the characters to the military techniques of the nation to the way food is prepared. No detail was overlooked, and this made the setting incredibly rich and immersive. The flip side to this is that on occasion the details were excessive. I personally found them interesting, but they didn’t always advance the story. The fantasy side of this, the way magic works in this fictional world, was also meticulously detailed and specific. It relied closely on priestly rituals like the real Rome had rather than the wand-waving staff-wielding spectacle we’ve come to expect from 21^st-century fantasy. This felt consistent with the setting, and was nicely believable.

There was only one place where this magic technique deviated, and this deviation is one of the book’s weaknesses. I don’t want to say much on it to avoid spoilers, but in the book’s climax the magic style changes for the more modern and more spectacle-driven, and I don’t think the change was necessary. I’d rather it kept the magic consistent throughout. This wasn’t the only issue I had with the climax. I also felt that it came a bit too suddenly, involving some major plot points that hadn’t had much lead-up prior to it. But, the book was of such high caliber that I’m not too bothered by this.

Fans of historical fiction will appreciate this book for its meticulous setting, fans of detective fiction will enjoy the carefully crafted mystery of the work, and fans of fantasy such as myself can take pleasure from this book’s new and unique type of fantasy world. With all of these styles working together so effectively, Murder in Absentia was a new type of reading experience for me, and I highly recommend it.

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.

New Book Review 19: Secret of the Seven

rise-of-nazil-1 The nineteenth book I’m reviewing is Secret of the Seven, the first novel in the series ‘The Rise of Nazil’ by Aaron-Michael Hall. The novel is for the most part high/epic fantasy, with strong overtones of dark fantasy. On that point, I should give a trigger warning on this review. The book contains a significant amount of rape and sexual violence, and I will speak on that content in this review. Readers who have had traumatic experiences or who are sensitive to those topics may wish to abstain from reading.

In this novel, humans are subject to rule by a race of people called Nazilians, whose capital is the city of Nazil. Nazilian society has ideology close to real-world fascism. They worship of gods embodying War, Power, Courage, and Judgment, and they obsess over racial purity. To them humans are inferior and anyone of mixed human and Nazilian blood is considered an abomination. Many Nazilians are sadistic and use terror as a way to maintain their power. Far from Nazil is the secret city of Bandari, where humans and Nazilians live in peace and harmony. One of the books central characters is Pentanimir, a Nazilian of the rank First Chosen (something like an elite military champion) who falls in love with a human woman, Brahanu. The two characters’ love is one of many pieces in the shifting dynamics of this land, which is moving toward a tipping point past which the cruel reign of Nazil cannot survive. Other pieces include the plotting of the giant Dessalonians who live on the edges of the map, and the awakening of god-like beings called Guardians (the titular Seven) who have their own plans for this world.

Apart from the occasional prophecy, there isn’t much of what we’d call magic in the story until near the end. The world is more closely related to the grit and cruelty that our own societies had during the Middle Ages. The story is strong and engaging, although it has some flaws. It moves along fairly slowly for the first two-thirds or so, setting up the pieces that bring it all to a grand climax in the last third of the book. Much of the time spent setting things up in the first two-thirds was spent on developing the romances between various characters. I’m not opposed to romance stories per se, but in this story they did slow things down quite a lot and I thought much of that aspect could have been shortened. One other aspect that I thought could have been shortened, that of sexual violence, calls for its own paragraph.

Now, I’ve read all five books in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (and I am waiting, respectfully and patiently, for The Winds of Winter). That series has gotten criticism for the amount of sexual violence in it. Secret of the Seven has more sexual violence in its 500-odd pages than A Song of Ice and Fire has in its 5,000-odd pages. It’s not left to implication and it’s not left to the imagination. It’s there, on the page, described in graphic and gruesome detail. Slaves of the Nazilians are descriptively raped, repeatedly. Captured enemies are treated to imaginative and meticulously-recounted tortures of sexual nature for dozens and dozens of pages. Every time you think the last of these scenes has passed, another one surprises you. Despite the book’s other strengths, I found this to be in poor taste. There were times when I strongly considered putting the book aside due to these scenes, but I kept on because I was invested in the characters. So, readers who cannot stomach those kinds of scenes would do well to stay away from this book.

The prose was good for the most part, though there were typos and a handful of parts that could have used a little more editing. However as I said before, the story was good, a strong addition to the fantasy genre. I know there are two others in the series right now, Seed of Scorn and Piercing the Darkness. I will most likely read the former in a few weeks, and if it’s good I’ll go on to the latter. Fans of epic fantasy who are not too put off by gruesome graphicness will probably enjoy this book.

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 17: Demorn: City of Innocents

The seventeenth book I’m reviewing here is Demorn: City of Innocents, the second book of David Finn’s Asanti series. Back in June I read the first one, Demorn: Blade of Exile, and I reviewed it on the blog here. The first impressed me enough to continue to the second, and when the third in the series comes out later this year I intend to buy, read, and review it as well. The label I gave the first book seems true of the whole series, a cross-dimensional dark modern fantasy adventure. The first book was both manically entertaining and manically confusing, and this second book toned down the manic quality of the first to create a work that was a little slower-paced but much easier to follow.

To review, Demorn is a powerful fighter who’s been engaged in wild adventures across time and multiple versions of reality for several years. Her paths have crossed with various gods, monsters, aliens, cultists, historical figures (she was all buddy-buddy with Frank Sinatra for as long as that lasted), magical objects, and so forth. She’s seen the end of the universe and witnessed the destruction of her own homeworld, which makes her a bit of a nihilist. As a priestess of the Asanti religious order she is privy to a wide variety of spells and arcane information, and as the royal-blooded Princess of Swords she’s nearly impervious to physical harm. She’s also a huge fan of 1960s music, superhero comic books, and romantic trysts with other dimension-hopping women. Demorn spent a good chunk of the last book trapped in a dimension she calls The Graveyard, and in this book she is trying to put the pieces of her life together after escaping from The Graveyard. There are a wide variety of characters (though not nearly as many as in the first book), but most of the story centers on Demorn and a godlike man she calls the Tyrant, who is alternately her close confidant and her bitter enemy as she works to avert a semi-inevitable cross-dimensional cosmic apocalypse.

The vivid storytelling and highly texture detail of the first book, its strongest points, carried over into the second. Every punch and burn and shock is felt by the character and the reader. With the story slowed down and given a tighter focus, this book was much easier to understand than the first. The complexity of the universe Demorn inhabits was still a little over my head, but it felt less overwhelming than before. The important parts weren’t so hard to follow this time around. It also helped that Demorn didn’t spend nearly as much time jumping around between worlds in this book, so I had more time to get accustomed to her locations.

For its followability, I would say that I liked this one better than the first book and I have very little bad to say about it. There were a handful of typos in the last fifteen percent of the book, which was a little unusual considering that I didn’t spot any at all in the rest of the book, but that’s not so bad. As I said before, fans of fantasy, science fiction, sword-and-sorcery, and fast-paced action stories will most likely take pleasure from this book.

And now once again, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here: New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8–New Book Review 9 –New Book Review 10–New Book Review 11–New Book Review 12–New Book Review 13–New Book Review 14–New Book Review 15–New Book Review 16

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 15: A Threat of Shadows

The fifteenth book I’m reviewing (geez, these things just keep going) is A Threat of Shadows, the first of the Keeper Chronicles series by J.A. Andrews. It’s another high fantasy novel, set in a medieval world populated by humans, dwarves, elves, dragons, wizards, and various mystical monsters. It also has the distinction of being, so far, the best indie novel I’ve read.

The protagonist’s hero and protagonist is Alaric, whose occupation as a Keeper enables him to have various magical abilities and a wide range of arcane knowledge. When Alaric’s wife Evangeline is bitten by a poisonous snake he embarks on a quest to find an antidote for her, which puts him in the path of a plot to resurrect a long-dead wizard of a wicked group called Shade Seekers.

In many ways the novel seems to follow several fantasy tropes that have been used to the point of cliché. Alaric is a quest in a traditional fantasy land, and he eventually becomes part of a traveling party with an old wizard, a gruff dwarf, an ethereal elf, a blacksmith, and a milkmaid. That trope, the diverse wandering fellowship, has been done many times before. However, without going too far into spoilers, this book turns the trope on its head in an unexpected and spectacular way. I’m always impressed by writers who can take the familiar aspects of a genre and do something new with them, and A Threat of Shadows does that especially well.

A major part of the book’s appeal for me was that it had a sense of wonder to it. I’ve noticed a trend with a lot of recent fantasy that the books sometimes take themselves very seriously. A Song of Ice and Fire, despite all that’s good about it, doesn’t have that sense of wonder. I don’t think the indie fantasy novels I’ve previously reviewed on this blog had it either. Books with a sense of wonder don’t try so hard to be gritty or realistic. They allow themselves to be playful, to do impossible things because impossible things are fun. The Harry Potter series is an especially prominent example of this. So is Piers Anthony’s A Spell for Chameleon of the Magic of Xanth series, but I strongly disliked that one for other reasons. Many fantasy novels written for children or young adults have that playfulness. I would not say that A Threat of Shadows is aimed at children or young adults (though it doesn’t have anything that would lead most parents to prohibit it), but it still has that playfulness and wonder.

A side-effect of that playfulness and wonder is that the characters occasionally benefited from having just a little too much luck in their quest (which, as the story progresses, shifts from healing Evangeline’s wife to preventing the return of the villainous wizard). In another book this might bother me, but in this case I’m okay with it. The writing was also very good, mostly without any grammatical or formatting mistakes.

To wrap this up, I would definitely recommend this book to fans of fantasy. If you’re into anything from J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Terry Pratchett, and so on, you’ll most likely enjoy this book.

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 14: Mercy for the Serpent

The fourteenth book I’m reviewing is Jaclyn Lewis’s novel Mercy for the Serpent. It’s billed on Amazon as science fiction, but by my reading it fits more closely with fantasy. The characters inhabit an Earth-like world called Trelisor, and their society is relatively primitive. This world has two factions locked in a centuries-old war, while a smaller faction called the Gleaners live in the jungles and deserts while survivor through thievery against the two main factions. Our protagonist is a young Gleaner named Phinehas (“the serpent”), a thief who unintentionally kills a man (Valahar) while stealing from him. The story’s plot centers on the consequences of this murder as Phinehas attempts to flee from the rigid justice of Valahar’s people, who include the victim’s wife Azira and brother Goeh’el.

The book is Christian-themed fiction, and this becomes clear fairly quickly. The conflict focuses on the decision by Valahar’s brother as to whether Phinehas should be justly executed for his crime, or whether he should be shown mercy. It’s difficult to review this book without giving away spoilers, but in the book Goeh’el chooses mercy and makes a plainly Christ-like sacrifice by choosing to be executed in Phinehas’s place. As the rest of the book goes, the rest of Valahar’s people must cope with this unusual decision while Phinehas must learn to live with his pardon.

The writing is quite beautiful. There are lots of vivid descriptions and flowery poetic language, which was initially was a little off-putting for me. Once I was further in and better adjusted to the writing style, it didn’t bother me. The fictional society was also very believable, which I appreciated.

I’ve had some issues with Christian fiction in the past, because I’ve seen a lot of it done badly. Often it is essentially a sermon disguised as a story, and the quality of the narrative suffers because the characters and events are secondary to the message. Christian fiction that avoids this pitfall can achieve great things. I consider C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy a good example of this, and some books of his Chronicles of Narnia are also good examples (not all are, but some are). Mercy for the Serpent, as a work of Christian fiction, avoids that pitfall for most of the book. Phinehas, Goeh’el, and Azira are characters with personalities and desires apart from just being characters in a sermon. When they are well-written, they are very well-written. That being said, towards the end of the book this pitfall became more prominent. I had the feeling that the author wanted to cram in as many Biblical allusions and references as possible (the Good Samaritan, Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, the divine name I Am Who I Am), and they didn’t all fit so well. The message of the book was strong, but many of the Biblical references felt like they were put in just for the sake of having Biblical references instead of because they contributed to the narrative.

Overall, I liked the book. The prose is very good and the setting is memorable, and it had a central theme that I certainly recognize and agree with. It was heavy-handed with its theme, but not enough to seriously detract from the book’s quality. I can certainly recommend it for Christian readers and fans of C.S. Lewis or Madeleine L’engle. It was appropriate for younger readers as well, so parents could suggest it to their children as well.

And now as always, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8–New Book Review 9 –New Book Review 10–New Book Review 11–New Book Review 12–New Book Review 13

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 13: A Spell in the Country

The thirteenth book I’m reviewing is Morgan Smith’s A Spell in the Country, a novel of the high fantasy series The Averraine Cycle. It’s written in first person and is stylistically similar to Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series or George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, though much smaller in scope and ambition.

The narrative follows Keridwen, a soldier and a young woman in the army of Keraine, a land caught in a long and arduous war against the neighboring land of Camrhys. Keridwen—or Keri, as she is more often called—is a tough and capable soldier, initially accused of treason against the kingdom but permitted to return to service at the backwater stronghold of Penvarron. While in Penvarron, Keri gets caught up in a sorcerous conspiracy against Keraine. She finds herself being used as a pawn in the power struggle between those loyal to Keraine and those covertly working for Camrhys, a struggle that gains supernatural aspects.

The writing excels in this novel. Keri’s voice and perspective comes through strongly, and while the pace is fairly slow, she is an engaging and believable-enough character to hold the reader’s interest throughout the book. The greatest strength to this book was its level of detail. The writing doesn’t gloss over the challenges of being a medieval soldier. It’s specific, and it’s gritty, and I must confess that I felt a little bit of envy toward the author for conveying that world more convincingly than I have in my own work. Morgan Smith seems to have done her research exceptionally well, and I commend her for that. The worldbuilding was also impressive for me, not because it was especially complex but because it was believable. The world of the story is very close to the real one. This isn’t fantasy with elves and dwarves and orcs and magic wands, instead it’s a credible medieval world in which magic exists in small subtle ways, primarily feared by the common people. The magic and ritual of the world is at odds with the official religion of the population (led by priests who worship a goddess), which also impressed me with its proximity to the way that belief in magic and ritual is at odds with authoritative beliefs in the real world. The book also handles suspense very well. Without giving away any spoilers, there is a lengthy section of the novel in which an unknown antagonist is murdering Penvarron soldiers and Keri must try to work out who it is, and the way suspense and fear were conveyed in that section was outstanding.

I did say that the pace is slow, and that’s worth considering if you favor fast action-packed fantasy novels. I would not say that the book is boring at all, but it’s not a thriller. It takes some patience and dedication from the reader to see it all through to the end. That being said, there was hardly anything wrong with it, and I quite enjoyed it. I’d definitely recommend it for fans of medieval fantasy and high fantasy.

And now as always, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8–New Book Review 9 –New Book Review 10–New Book Review 11–New Book Review 12

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 12: Dreamscape

The twelfth book I’m reviewing here is Jenna Whittaker’s standalone novel Dreamscape. It’s a work of fantasy, though it doesn’t quite fit into any fantasy sub-genre that I’m familiar with. I almost want to say that Whittaker has established an entirely new fantasy sub-genre with it, but I’ll need to see if there are many similar books before jumping to that conclusion.

In the story, god-like beings vie for power in an alternate dimension called the Dreamscape. The mortal world suffers for the struggles between the gods, with the god Watcher and his allies The Sisters serving on the side of good and the cyborg-goddess Machina opposing them. To check Machina’s power, the gods execute a plan to have one of their number, the god Keeper, born in the form of a human named Khalos. As a human, he has no memory of his divinity or his power, and the main narrative follows him as he tries to work out who he is and why he’s in his position. I find the premise absolutely fascinating. It alludes to a variety of mythic and religious figures going back for thousands of years (Jesus, Krishna, every demigod-figure) and leads the reader to imagine the confusion and pain that would come with such a role.

The world of the Dreamscape has fantasy elements both familiar and unique. The gods manifest their power in different forms there, magic is carried out through singing, and mighty black gryphons travel between the world of the gods and the world of humans as the need dictates. The world of the humans in the novel seemed for the most part to be medieval-ish, but really that wasn’t clear to me. There seemed to be some modern conventions in it, so it’s hard to say.

One reason it’s hard to say the precise nature of the world is the author’s particular style of writing. The story is slow. There’s not a ton of concrete description, instead we spent most of the story inside of Khalos’s head and experiencing the world through his confused thoughts as he processes the mysteries that he encounters. The two adjectives that best describe the slow style, in my opinion, are ‘contemplative’ and ‘dreamlike’. Fans of fast-paced action and razor-sharp dialogue probably won’t enjoy this style. Personally, I loved it. It was different, but it was never boring. It’s a stretch, but it brought to my mind some aspects of the style of W. Somerset Maugham.

One problem does arise from this style though, and it served as a detractor at certain points. When the story does call for action, its impact is lost. This is especially prominent near the end of the story. There is fighting and warfare, but the dreamlike style softens it a little too much.

Overall, the book is both strong and unique, and I enjoyed every minute I spent reading it. It’s unique to the point that I can’t say exactly who the best target audience would be, but patient and thoughtful readers who enjoy fantasy and mythology should take pleasure in it.

And now as always, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8–New Book Review 9 –New Book Review 10–New Book Review 11

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.