H.J. Cronin

Wilmurin - an epic fantasy about druids and vampires.

2.5 stars, rounded to 3 for purpose of rating.

Wilmurin starts when our main character Johan is transported from the WWII setting of D-day like battlefield into a magical land of Wilmurin. We find out that our world is nothing but a dream world created by a great wizard Eagle in order to stash Johan away, because basically everybody is after him. Johan is the last of his kind and only man capable of ending the threat that comes to Wilmurin in the form of a vampiric lord Darkool.

The concept of the book is very cool. I don't come across many druid fantasy books (although recently that kind of a read has been popping up in my reading with Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series, but that's a different beastie altogether), so the idea of druids and druidic magic appeals to me. In this book main magic of the druids is in transforming into their main animal form. I didn't notice they were capable of making spells, aside from Eagle and Darkool.

Another good point about this book is its fast paced action. I've not been bored with it at all, there are many battles to keep the action rolling. There's also a bit of backstabbing politics that basically starts things off.

So why only 2.5 stars? Well because despite having a cool concept and plenty of action this book also has fair amount of problematic points.

The weakest point for me were the characters and they are the most important to me in any book.
Characters are either completely good or completely evil, with the exception of one of the brothers in Bear druid clan, who's a bit on the grey side.
Why is this a problem for me? Motivation. I don't find their motivation for their behavior believable at all. It takes me out of the story when the character is pure goodness personified or so evil with no hinges whatsoever.
It makes their reasoning, motivation and behavior too simple and the characters end up one dimensional.
Great characters, be they good or evil have internal conflicts which makes their behavior more nuanced and more interesting to read about. Even Sauron wasn't pure evil always. Quite opposite.

Another thing that really bothered me is the relationship between the characters. In the book Johan ends up with a little party that is helping him on his mission. He's already been in Wilmurin for a month, but that's a very short time. In his party everybody acts like they have been best friends forever, everybody loves everybody and they would literally die for one another. Such devotion, such loyalty and love for one another is simply unrealistic. But because of such setup I literally cringed at some of their conversations professing true friendship and eagerness to self sacrifice, considering they know each other such a short time.

On the other points the writing style is a bit on the simple style which I don't mind so much seeing this is a debut book. The mission Johan is on can be quite RPG like, which is a miss for me, but some people might like it. There's also quite a bit of telling, little less showing especially in regard of how beautiful Wilmurin is.

Interesting thing...before the story starts, we are given a short history of Wilmurin which serves as a kind of a framework for events that will happen. I never encountered that before. Usually authors give bits and pieces of history throughout the book via conversations and back stories.

Finally,read the book if you like druids, vampires and elves (yes there are elves here) and action.… (meer)