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 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 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 25: Feeder

feeder-cover The twenty-fifth book I’ll review in this blog is the modern/urban fantasy novel Feeder, by Lucinda Hawks Moebius. Lucinda has been extremely supportive of the online independent author community and devotes a tremendous amount of effort and energy to it, so I’m happy to give her some support back. This novel could be categorized as horror, but I hesitate to call it that because it didn’t seem to be written with the intent of scaring the reader. But of course, as with any book, another reader may view it differently.

The protagonist and narrator of this novel, Maria Christine, is known as a Were, or a Feeder, soul-eater, vampire, demon, etc. Different cultures give different names to her species. Members of her species call themselves Were, and within her species there are different types of Were with different attributes and abilities. The greatest similarity between all Were is the need to feed upon the life energy (that is to say souls, more or less) of living humans. For better or worse, Feeder is a vampire novel. This might be off-putting for a lot of readers, but as they say you shouldn’t judge a book by its genre (well, they say something like that). Every author who takes on the vampire concept puts their own spin on it, and this author is no exception. Rest assured, this book isn’t just a carbon copy of Twilight (thank goodness). Nobody sparkles, nobody is especially attractive, and in fact it’s quite a bit more brutal and gritty than many other vampire-related works I’ve read. Maria Christine lives in the streets. She came from an abusive foster care background and is essentially a loner. The only person she trusts is Agnes, her caretaker and fellow Were, whose manipulations and wicked schemes set our antihero running for her life into an unfamiliar world of warring Were covens and predatory Were-hunters.

It’s difficult to pin down exactly why, but for some reason a good long stretch of this novel felt like an elaborated version of an urban legend. Something about Maria Christine seemed like she could be a monster from this twenty-first century mythology, this glass-and-concrete folklore. Part of this is the way that humans are treated in the book. In short, humans are not characters. They are faceless and oblivious, existing only to be fed upon by the Were. Maria Christine is a sympathetic character, but her need to kill humans to survive makes her into an antihero. I can imagine teenagers whispering this story of story to one another in the same way tales of creatures like Slenderman and Stick Indians were whispered in my own school. Personally I love mythology and folklore in whatever form it takes, so I admire the way this book managed to capture this urban legend kind of feeling.

There is a lot to like and admire in this book, but it did have some downsides. The antagonists aren’t very well fleshed-out and seemed kind of clichéd. Some of the excitement slows down a lot halfway through when Maria Christine finds a more safe and stable place to live, and there were some dull stretches there. And, there were a good number of typos throughout the book. All of that being said, I enjoyed it. Vampire fiction isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I liked this book and I’m certain that fans of vampire fiction or supernatural fiction or urban fantasy will enjoy it even more than 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.

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–New Book Review 24

This post was originally featured on cwbookclub.com.