I’m going to post a longer discussion of this on my newsletter, but in the meantime:
A Wind from the Wilderness, at the time of writing this review, is a semi-finalist in the current SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off), a competition to find the best self-published fantasy book, and it deserves its place.
This is a historical fantasy, mostly set during the first crusade as a Frankish and Greek army makes its way towards Jerusalem. It focuses mainly on three characters, A Syrian boy, Lukas, a Turkish girl, Ayla, and a Frankish count, Saint-Gilles. Lukas is a refugee in time, cast forward by dark magic four hundred and some years from his own time and caught up in the crusade. Ayla is looking for revenge against the Watchers, a group who killed her father.
The book follows their journey.
The book that this most reminded me of was A Game of Thrones (not surprising, perhaps, with A Game of Thrones being strongly influenced by history and historical fiction itself), not in the specific events but in the style of story. We have that same mixture of the young people (Lukas and Ayla) trying to get home and get revenge, joined with the battles and political scheming, mostly shown through Saint-Gilles’ point of view. The writing is vivid and lush. I don’t know much about the period, but the author convinced me that she did, and the details are immersive.
Oddly, as a fantasy fan, the part of the story that interested me least was the magic. It lacked the believability and the richness of the historical parts of the book, and sometimes I wished this was a straight historical novel. I had a few minor nitpicks. Although the writing was very good, there were a couple of places where Lukas spent a lot of time swallowing and gulping, and there were a few repeated words and phrases. All of this would be easy to fix in another copyedit, but it didn’t distract from my enjoyment. There were also a couple of chapters from other points of view that didn’t really add anything for me.
This is an extremely strong book. If you like historical fantasy or just historical fiction, I highly recommend this. Beware, though, if you can’t cope with harm to children, because there is one incident that may distress you, but I don’t want to give spoilers.
I’m looking forward to the sequels, which I understand will follow other members of Lukas’s family who have also been lost in other time periods.
I have been lax, and slack, and inefficient. I finished this wonderful book a week ago and I haven’t reviewed it yet. Let’s fix that.
First up, let’s get the basics out the way. The Bone Ships, by RJ Barker, is a magnificent book. It really is. Barker’s previous Wounded Kingdom trilogy (Age of Assassins, Blood of Assassins, King of Assassins) was very good, but this is a massive step up, and it wouldn’t be unfair to say that this is Barker’s masterwork.
The basic story is simple enough. The Hundred Isles have been fighting a war against the Gaunt Isles for generations. In this world of scattered islands, the battles are fought on the seas between ships built from the bones of gigantic, extinct sea dragons. Over time, with no new supply of bones, ships have become only more valuable. Then a new sea dragon is spotted making its way through the islands. If either side hunts and kills the dragon, the vast haul of bones will prolong the war for many more generations.
Joron Twiner is the Shipwife (captain) of the black ship the Tide Child. Black ships are old, decaying bone ships crewed by women and men condemned to death. Rather than take his ship into battle, Twiner has laid up in an isolated bay, found a tumbledown shack and is slowly drinking himself into oblivion, leaving his crew to their own devices on board ship. And there he remains until the day that Lucky Meas turns up to challenge him for the position of shipwife. Lucky Meas has been condemned to the black ships after losing her position in the fleet, but she’s not taking it lying down. After defeating Twiner and sparing his life, she sets about getting the Tide Child into shape. Because Lucky Meas has a plan: she will not let either the Hundred Isles or the Gaunt Isles capture the sea dragon. She will protect it in its passage through the archipelago, fighting off both sides if necessary, until it is beyond reach and then she will kill it, denying the bones to everyone and hopefully hastening the end of the war.
The Bone Ships is simply the story of the Tide Child as it carries out its mission.
Like I said, a pretty simple story, right?
Well, at that level it is. But where The Bone Ships really shines is in its world building and its characters. Barker dives deep into a very alien world. Much fantasy – most fantasy, and I include my own in this – is based approximately on locations, cultures, and history from our world. The Bone Ships really isn’t. In the ocean-based, ship-focused story, there are obvious echoes of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series and CS Forester’s Hornblower, but Barker has created a complex, unique world to set the stories in and then he has followed through rigorously to the consequences of this world. It’s worldbuilding that informs every aspect of the books. Any examples don’t really do justice to the immersive nature, but let’s take a few anyway. The Hundred Isles is a strongly matriarchal culture, and this manifests itself not just in the political set-up or people’s positions, but in the language. Ships are always ‘he’, the captain is the shipwife, people are referred to as ‘women and men’, not ‘men and women’, and so on. The ships, being built of bone, have different names for their components. The masts are ‘spines’, the front is the ‘beak’.
But that’s just scratching the surface. From the birdlike wind wizards, the gullaime, to the brutal sacrificing of first-born children (luckily not explicitly described on the page, for those of us who don’t have the stomach for that), and a complex set of shipboard customs, this is an intricate and very different society. It is also not one that is admirable. Anyone born disabled in any way or born to a mother who dies in childbirth is consigned to an explicit underclass.
The complexity of the worldbuilding could cause some problems as the reader flails for familiarity – and a few reviews reference that – but it didn’t for me, and the reason for that was the characters. There are a quite a lot of them, but all of them are well-realised and convincing, and they are what lead you into the story. Joron Twiner and Lucky Meas, being the leads, are the most interesting, but there are plenty of other great characters. They are our guides into a world that at first is difficult to understand but which becomes increasingly convincing.
There isn’t a great deal of fantasy set aboard ships for some reason. Robin Hobbs’s Liveship Traders series is the most obvious example, and The Bone Ships deserves comparison with Hobbs’s books, in tone as well as in it’s shipboard setting.
The Bone Ships is exhilarating, engrossing, and thrilling in equal measures. I loved the time I spent in the company of the crew of the Tide Child. A few readers may find themselves cast adrift by the alienness of the fantasy setting, but I don’t think most will. I understand there was a glossary in the book, but I didn’t have consult it once and didn’t even realise it was there until I saw other people mention it.
I should note here that RJ Barker sent me a paperback copy of this book for review. This did not in any way affect my opinion of the book or my review. In fact, I ended up reading an ebook copy that I bought myself, partly because the paperback was so pretty I didn’t want to crease it, but mainly because I wanted to keep reading at night without a light.
One note, though, and I feel I should include this, because I’ve noted it for some self-published books recently and I want to be fair: there were quite a few typos in the ebook edition. Not so many that it interfered with my enjoyment of the book, but they were noticeable. I don’t know if the print edition shares those.
The Bone Ships is the first in the Tide Child trilogy, and I for one can’t wait for the next.
This books has the myths. All the myths. Seriously. You might even say there are no myths … mything (no, I’m not sorry for that; Robert Aspirin made a career from that pun.)
Incidentally, I’ve been writing book reviews on this blog for quite a while, on and off, but I’ve decided that I’m going to call them “book recommendations” from now on. Partly because I’m not going to fill good blog space (they charge by the pixel, you know) telling you about books I don’t like, but mainly because my brain is weird and when I call something a review I get all hung up about it having to be formal and serious, and really, who wants that?
So, back to Paternus.
I’m going to be honest. I tried this book maybe a year ago, and I only got a couple of chapters in before putting it aside. But I kept hearing great things about it, so I figured I would give it another go, and I am very glad I did. In fact, this is one of the best books I’ve read this year, if not the best.
I’m kind of finding it hard to describe the book. It’s a contemporary fantasy, but quite unlike almost anything else. The only book that really came to mind for me was American Gods, but I enjoyed this a lot more than American Gods, which slightly missed the mark for me, even though I normally like Gaiman’s stuff. Here’s the description of the Paternus: Rise of the Gods on Goodreads:
Even myths have legends. And not all legends are myth.
When a local hospital is attacked by strange and frightening men, Fiona Patterson and Zeke Prisco save a catatonic old man named Peter–and find themselves running for their lives with creatures beyond imagination hounding their every step.
With nowhere else to turn, they seek out Fi’s enigmatic Uncle Edgar. But the more their questions are answered, the more they discover that nothing is what it seems–not Peter, not Edgar, perhaps not even themselves.
The gods and monsters, heroes and villains of lore–they’re real. And now they’ve come out of hiding to hunt their own. In order to survive, Fi and Zeke must join up with powerful allies against an ancient evil that’s been known by many names and feared by all. The final battle of the world’s oldest war has begun.
Ashton doesn’t make this book easy for himself. The first four, five, six – can’t remember exactly – chapters each follow different, at-first-unrelated characters. They are also told in an omniscient voice in present tense. In other words, it’s pretty far out of the normal for fantasy, which tends to either be third person or, occasionally, first person and told in the past tense. It was enough to throw me at first.
But the story is incredibly compelling once you get used to the way it’s told. There are so many original, great ideas, plenty of action, really good characters, and a plot that emerges slowly and satisfyingly over the course of the story. I found both it and its sequel (Paternus: Wrath of the Gods) enormously absorbing.
It’s not perfect, of course. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that is. Where Paternus dipped slightly for me was when What Is Going On is explained to Fi and Zeke. The story loses a little momentum, and there is a bit of Forrest Gump-ism going on when certain characters turn out to have been involved in pretty much every major historical and mythological event you can think of. But that only lasts for a chapter or so, and then the story gets going again.
When you’re a writer yourself, there are two types of good books. The books where you think, “That was great. Maybe I’ll write a book like that.” And then sometimes you do. And there are the books where you think, “Yeah, no, I could never write that.” This definitely one of the latter books for me.
This book got third place in the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off competition in 2016 , which unless it was up against The Lord of the Rings and War and Peace that year is kind of astonishing to me. Well, perhaps not. Any book that’s written in such a non-standard way for fantasy isn’t going to please everyone.
As I said, this is one of the best books I’ve read this year. If you decide to give it a go, don’t be put off by the less-than-usual style. Go with it. It will be rewarding.
Okay, let’s start off with the fact that this is a really good book. I’m saying this up front, because I know I’m going to waffle in places out sheer ignorance, and I don’t want to put people off.
Rob Hayes has been making a bit of a name for himself in the self-published fantasy community, but this is the first of his books that I’ve read, and it won’t be the last.
Never Die is set, I think, in an alternative world version of China. (This is the waffle bit, by the way.) With possibly a bit of alternative world Japan. Or not. Here’s the problem. I know sod all about the history and mythology of China or Japan, other than having watched a few Wuxia movies. So I don’t actually know whether Hayes has based his story accurately on Chinese (or Japanese) mythology, has done it loosely, or whether this book bears the same relationship to Chinese / Japanese history and mythology that, say, Game of Thrones does to British history and mythology. The fact that I keep saying Chinese / Japanese shows just how ignorant I am about all this. It’s probably best to say that I should leave any discussion of his use of history and mythology to people who know what the fuck they are talking about.
So, onto the story. Legendary swordswoman Cho, known as the Whispering Blade, is killed in the defence of Kaishi City against a bandit army. Then, she finds herself resurrected and bound to the will of a strange boy named Ein. He needs her help to kill the corrupt Emperor of Ten Kings. She isn’t the only hero the boy needs, and he proceeds to resurrect and recruit other heroes, all of whom have powers of one sort or the other. Some of whom aren’t actually dead and who have to be killed first by Cho and her comrades.
Hayes does a wonderful job of taking us through this world with its heroes and monsters, all the while carefully dropping in hints that things aren’t quite the way our characters believe them to be. Time in particular seems to be passing oddly.
A couple of things on the negative side, none of which are enough to stop this book being a recommendation. There are a few places where another round of proofreading would have been good. No book is ever 100% free of typos, but from time to time, the number became noticeable and distracting. This is also not a character-driven story (which is okay; not every story should be). We never get incredibly deep into the characters or incredibly close to their point of view. Again, this isn’t something that is wrong with the book, but if you prefer your books to be character-driven, you may enjoy this slightly less. That’s not to say the characters are poorly done. Cho, and the other main hero, Zhihao Cheng, the Emerald Wind, are the best realised, but all are believable and engaging. They are just not massively deep.
While this is, to some degree, a martial arts fantasy, it doesn’t try to shove in too much action, instead letting the story drive where the action occurs.
Overall, despite my waffling review, I really enjoyed this book and I will definitely be picking up more of Hayes’s work.
Myke Cole is better known for his military SF novels, so this is a bit of a change of genre.
The Armored Saint is a well-written, straightforward, simple fantasy story without many subplots or diversions. In an age of increasingly large epic fantasies, this will undoubtedly appeal to a lot of people, and I certainly found it refreshing (although I still love those vast epic fantasies).
The world of The Armored Saint is fairly standard medieval with the added feature of being ruled and structured by a rigid and violently enforced set of religious rules. The Order who enforce them claim that their oppressive rules are to prevent the demons, vanquished by the emperor, from returning to the world.
Heloise comes into conflict with this Order when she and her father are accosted by them on the road. The Order use their power to intimidate and try to rob the pair and then later oversee a massacre of a neighbouring village.
So much, so fairly standard for fantasy, although the claustrophobic rule of the Order is much more visceral and strict than in many books.
The strength of the book comes partly in the very well realised character of Heloise, who is definitely the stand-out character in the book; others are less well developed. But the main strength that Cole brings to this book is the tension that he creates in scenes of confrontation. There is relatively little actual violence, but the threat of it, the powerlessness of the Heloise, her father, and other villagers, is genuinely and literally nail-biting. I’m not sure I’ve read another fantasy author who brings so much tension into simple confrontations. I wish I knew how he does it.
The action climax and the ‘twist’ that precedes it, by contrast, were less interesting although perfectly well handled.
Four stars, because The Armored Saint has some outstanding aspects but it may lack a little heft in other areas.
I’m making a conscious effort to seek out good self-published fantasy. I’ve read some self-published fantasy before, of course, but only by accident, as it were. Some has been good, some has been less good. So I wanted to actually go out of my way to find the really good self-pub stuff that I might be missing.
The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble’s Braids, by Michael McClung was the winner of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off competition for 2015, run by writer Mark Lawrence, so that seemed a good place to start.
The thief Amra Thetys agrees to look after a friend’s looted statuette while he bargains with a buyer. The next morning, the friend is found dead, brutally murdered. Amra is determined to find the killer and avenge her friend. What follows is an adventure full of peril, brutal magic, and fallen gods.
The best thing about The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble’s Braids were the characters of Amra, who is determined, sarcastic, and loyal, and her ally, the slightly disturbing mage Holgren. The story is told by Amra, and her voice stands out, full of energy and attitude. It’s unusual still to find fantasy where the protagonist has such a distinctive voice, and the book very much benefits from it.
I’ve given this four stars rather than five, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it. For me, the writing could have been tightened up in a few places, and the author’s fondness for occasional sentence fragments didn’t work for me, pulling me out of the story. The epilogue, which isn’t in Amra’s voice, seemed tacked on just to make it clear there would be further stories. But these are minor issues.
I’m very happy to have read this book, and I’ll definitely read more of the Amra Thetys series. I would judge my attempt to find really good self-published fantasy novels a success on this first hit out. Give it a try.
Four stars, edging on four and a half.
(I would add that I’m not a massive fan of this cover, but don’t let it put you off.)
Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson, is one of those books that I started, read a few chapters, then put down, only to pick up again recently. I probably put books down too quickly when they don’t grab me, but then there are so many books.
The city of Elantris was once a magical city, inhabited by people with near godlike powers. Then, ten years ago, the magic vanished, leaving the city crumbling and those who survived the riots that followed its fall losing their minds to the pain of their accumulated injuries. They are stuck in a half life where they don’t have to eat and where pretty much nothing kills them but where they never heal. The inhabitants of Elantris always spontaneously appeared among the population, transforming overnight from ordinary people to demigods. Now, though, when they are transformed they become the same half dead men and women that Elantrians have become and are cast into the rotting city.
The book follows, for the most part, three characters: Raoden, the Crown Prince, who awakens to find himself transformed into an Elantrian and who is thrown into the ruins of Elantris, with its gangs of desperate, feral people; Sarene, a princess who was travelling to marry Raoden, but who finds herself supposedly a widow before she is even married; and Hrathen, a high priest of a fanatical religion sent to convert the country and given only three months to do it. If he can’t, the country will be invaded and the population slaughtered by the armies of his religion.
Elantris was Brandon Sanderson’s first novel, and he is a more mature and accomplished storyteller now. Nonetheless, this is an impressive debut. It is complex, satisfying, and told with a lightness and energy that many other fantasy writers would envy. Despite a few missteps, this is a very satisfying read.
You can see Sanderson developing themes and character types that he will return to in his later work, particularly in his absurdly epic Stormlight Archive series. For example, there are echoes of Raoden in the Stormlight Archive’s Kaladin. Raoden starts as a prince, falls to less than a beggar, and builds a new, loyal group from the dispirited dregs of Elantris. Kaladin begins as a doctor’s son and leader of an elite army squad, becomes a slave, and then forges a new, loyal group from the lowest of low slaves sent on suicide runs for the army. Sarene is a young woman heading to a foreign land in order to forge a political alliance through marriage to protect her country and who becomes a pivotal figure in her new country struggles. Shallan from the Stormlight Archive leaves her family to form a political alliance through marriage to save her family and, again, becomes a pivotal figure in her new country. Galladon, Raoden’s new friend and right-hand man in Elantris, certainly shares some DNA with the Stormlight Archive’s Rock. This is not to say that the characters are the same. Raoden doesn’t share Kaladin’s crippling depression, for example. But it is interesting to see how the character types have developed in Sanderson’s writing.
As I said, this is not flawless. At least one character, for example, is introduced too late on and then doesn’t really do anything, and one of the revelations near the end seems rather pointless. But it is highly entertaining, imaginative, and has enough originality to stand out from the bulk of debuts.
It also shows that I shouldn’t give up so quickly on books.
4 stars. A very impressive debut, by an author who has become one of the major stars of fantasy.
Folks, I am sad. I have run out of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London books, and the next one isn’t due until November.
In fact, I ran out of the novels a few months back. This review is of a linked novella.
I do quite like the modern trend for publishing linked novellas or even series of novellas. Although I prefer full-length novels, there’s something to be said for a well-constructed, contained, and focused story, particularly if it bridges the wait for a new novel.
To briefly recap the Rivers of London series, which now has six novels and this novella (as well as some graphic novels that I haven’t read; more on that later): Peter Grant is a police constable in London who, having stumbled upon a supernatural murder, becomes part of a very small department of the Metropolitan Police which deals with all manner of supernatural occurrence. So far, so not out of the normal for urban fantasy. This department, the Folly, was once a large society of wizards, but has now been reduced down to a single remaining member, Nightingale, until Peter Grant comes along.
Throughout the series, Peter deals with supernatural creatures, gods and goddesses of the rivers, dark wizards, and so on, as well as carrying out his police work.
Where the Rivers of London series really steps up and what makes it, in my opinion, the best urban fantasy series out there, is in the way it lovingly and with detail incorporates its locations (mainly London). In fact, it’s arguable that London is the best and most important character in the stories. I’m not sure I’ve ever read another urban fantasy with such a rich sense of place. But the descriptions never become tedious, because they are all done with a slightly snarky humour. The books are witty, sharp, involving, and reflect the diversity of London society and culture.
It also doesn’t hurt that Peter is a geek, with a good line in science fiction and fantasy references, as well as an interest in architecture. (For example, in the last novel, The Hanging Tree, a building is described as looking “like two Star Destroyers have backed into each other during manoeuvres”.)
So, onto this particular novella, The Furthest Station. The good news is that, despite its much shorter length (maybe 1/3 – 1/4 of a full novel), Aaronovitch has kept the style and rich observations that make the other books so readable. We start the story with Peter investigating reports of a ghost harassing people on the underground. At this point in the series, we have a good cast of supporting characters to populate the stories. In The Furthest Station, Peter is joined by his teenage cousin Abigail and Jaget Kumar of the British Transport Police, both of whom have featured in earlier novels. Other series regulars, Nightingale (Peter’s boss) and Peter’s girlfriend Beverly Brook (minor river goddess), make brief appearances but aren’t significant players.
Because it is much shorter, the story is by necessity much more direct than the novels, although Aaronovitch does take time to take us on a few diversions. I don’t want to go too much into the plot, because it would give away too much of plot of the novella, but suffice to say that it proceeds neatly to a good conclusion.
If I do have a criticism it is that occasionally the story could have done with a little more explanation of how and why it got to certain places. I am not sure if that’s just down to length or because Aaronovitch is referencing and leading off events that occurred in the associated graphic novels, which, as I said, I haven’t read. He did this a little in The Hanging Tree, too. Others may have a different point of view, but I’m not a massive fan of requiring readers to have read loosely related other series to understand what is going on, and I feel requiring a knowledge of the graphic novels is a step too far.
Still, I enjoyed this novella immensely, and I just worked on the assumption that the stuff with the foxes, for instance, tied into another storyline.
I do have one more complaint, though, and this may be one that puts off more potential readers. It’s not a criticism of the author or the story, but of the publisher. The Furthest Station, as I said, is a novella and it’s not much more than a hundred pages. However, the publisher has chosen to price it at exactly the same price as the full length novels. Now, I know that many of the costs to the publisher are the same no matter what length a book is, but it’s very hard to justify such a high cost for such a short work.
I borrowed the copy I read from the library. If the cost drops in the future, I will probably buy myself a copy, but not at this price.
The Legend of Podkin One-Ear by Kieran Larwood is a high fantasy featuring rabbits. In that way, it follows a path long trodden by the likes of Redwall or The Wind in the Willows, although it has slightly more in the way of fantasy elements than either of those.
One Midwinter, an old bard arrives at the Thornwood Warren and, in exchange for food and shelter, begins to tell the story of the great hero, Podkin One-Ear, who, along with his sister, Paz, and their companions, defeated the evil Gorm. This first book in what appears to be at least a trilogy tells the story of Podkin as a young rabbit when the Gorm come to his home of Munberry Warren and Podkin, Paz, and their baby brother are forced to flee for their lives. It’s a story of survival, the gathering of a small band, and the first strike back against the Gorm, and it’s also a story about growing up, as Podkin goes from being a spoilt, lazy son of a chief to a determined young rabbit.
Initially, the bookending story of the bard seemed slightly unnecessary, but as the story progressed, it became obvious that there was more to that story too, and that it might become more important in future books.
I read this book with my nine-year-old son as his bedtime story, and we both enjoyed it enormously. You can always tell how greatly a kid is engrossed in a story from the amount of pleading for more pages when it’s time to stop, and there was plenty of pleading here.
Podkin One-Ear has a style and tone that immediately mark it out as a classic. There’s warmth – even a cosiness -, adventure, plenty of colour in the depth of detail and description, and appealing, iconic characters. It’s got terrible baddies in the Gorm, rabbits twisted by a kind of living iron and whose bodies are pierced through with metal, and heroes, such as Crom, the blind warrior, as well as a good host of supporting characters. At times, it’s gruesome and there are deaths of Podkin’s family and friends, although nothing my son couldn’t handle.
There were a couple of minor issues with the book, which both my son and I picked up on as we read it. For instance, the rabbits don’t use iron, as the Goddess hates it and it’s the metal of the evil Gorm. But at one point, one of the characters is carrying an iron key. We both expected that to have some significance, but none of the characters seemed to notice and it never came up again (at least in the first book). We also thought that the big bad, the leader of the Gorm, Scramashank, was rather too easily defeated by Podkin through what should have been a rather obvious vulnerability, which we were surprised that none of the warrior rabbits previously beaten by the Gorm had picked up on.
In fact, if I have one criticism of the book it’s that Podkin and co found it just a little too easy to escape from or beat the Gorm at various points of the book, bearing in mind just how terrible the Gorm were supposed to be.
But these are minor points that didn’t get in the way of ou8r enjoyment of the story. I always like to use as a test of how good a book is how quickly I start reading the sequel, and we jumped straight into book 2 the moment we finished this one.
The Legend of Podkin One-Ear is destined to become a classic children’s book, at least in this household. Thoroughly recommended for any child aged about eight to twelve, and for adults who enjoy traditional adventure fantasy.
This is the most charming, delightful fantasy novel you will read this year.
Set in an alternate-history England, in approximately the Regency era (early nineteenth century), this is the story of Cassandra Harwood, the first female magician in Angland. In this alternative reality, where Boudicca drove the Romans out of Britain, women hold political power while men have traditionally been the magicians. Cassandra was not only the first female magician, but also a very capable one. That is, until she tried a too-powerful spell that nearly killed her. Now, if she uses magic again, it will very likely finish the job.
Which would be all very well. Except that now she has stumbled into the path of a malevolent elf lord. If she can’t carry out his demands within a week, her life will be forfeit. But without magic, how can she hope to unpick the mystery and face up to his overwhelming power?
And if that isn’t enough, she’s trapped in the snow in a house party with her ex-fiance, her interfering family, manipulative lady politicans, and troublesome male magicians: her former colleagues, who never thought she should be allowed to be a magician in the first place.
Cassandra will have to find a way to neutralise the deadly elf lord and deal with her infuriating former fiance and the feelings she still holds for him.
Snowspelled is wonderful fantasy novel, full of spark, energy, and brilliant, sharp characters. There is a mystery, a romance, and a magical threat growing ever closer in a completely unique setting. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Snowspelled is a very short novel, just a little longer than a novella, but it is fast moving and you never feel like anything is lacking. The characters and plot are all fully developed. It’s the first of three novellas. The second, Thornbound, is due out in 2018, and I can’t wait!
