A J Rettger

The book was offered to me by Book Sirens by the author in exchange for an honest review, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I will start by saying that I review books for plot, characterization, Character arcs, POW, and style.

First I must say that I didn't find many grammatical errors, and the author's use of language is beautiful.

However, I did find many problems, and I will summarize them using only the prologue and a few other examples.

The prologue.

The prologue should have been called chapter one or not been added at all. This could have been taken out, and the author could have given us the information little by little through the story. Make it interesting. I got what happened with Mario’s Father at the start of the book, and the surprise ended. The prologue starts with a man in a field of battle. We do not know who the man is. However, the story is being told from the man’s POV. The man should know his own name. So why call him the man and not give us his name? That is a problem with the POV. Then there is a switch of POV from third person limited to omniscient. And then there were so many internal monologues that it made me want to skip many sections.

So, we have the man's character without a name telling the story, and he smears blood on the “visor” of his helmet. Is this a SciFi book? It has elves and fighting with swords. Visors are made with plastic. Obviously, the author didn’t do his homework on how the armor looks and how it is constructed (materials, styles, era, weight, etc.).

This knight is leaning in a mount of bodies. In battle, men are left scattered. The movement of battle is forward on one side and back on the other, so there can’t be mounts of bodies. Unless the bodies are being picked up and piled to be burned. However, this knight is the only one on the field. From where the mount of bodies came from unless the knight piled them, but the story said the fighting had just finished. This battle scene is broken and needed to be rewritten and better visualized.

Next, a young man comes riding a horse in a gallop. The man without a name made an assumption that the young man had been riding the horse hard all day. I am still scratching my head with that one. The character has an internal monologue, “A fine steed. A shame this dope is running it straight into the ground.” Horses are made to gallop hard when in battle. The warrior had said he had a horse. He should know that when in battle, things must be done in haste. Horses that were brought to battle were trained to withstand harsh conditions. This dialogue was out of line for the place and a knight.

Having said that, I found many other dialogues like this one all throughout the story. These internal monologues told me the story. I want to be shown the story.

So, later I found out the knight was Paul, Mario’s father.

I am going to leave the prologue there because I think I said enough to drive my point.

So the story is supposed to be about Mario Deschamps. However, we were made to connect to his father in the prologue. So Mario is a graduate of the Knight's College.

Okay, and here I must stop... No, I have more to say.

Normally in the world of all the other fantasy books, and the way people become knights in real life. Squires are knighted for heroics done. Young men start as pages; then they become squires. So, if a squire had proven his bravery and skill at the battle, he would become a knight, usually after the age of twenty-five. However, it could be as young as twenty-one. The young man would gain the title of knight at a "dubbing" ceremony. At this ceremony, he would kneel before another knight, lord, or king, who would then tap the squire on the shoulder with his sword making him a knight. However, in this story, Mario goes to college becomes a knight without having done a God Blessed heroic thing. He didn’t earn the title; he just went to college. It is like the youth of today. They all get a trophy for doing nothing. They have to breathe, and they get a trophy. You can see I dislike the premise of getting anything without earning it. But I kept reading only because I said I would.

The Characters,

And we have the Elf Deidre, and of course, she had to be an archer, and she needed to hate humans. Humans killed the elves in the elven rebellion failure. She, like the elves in most fantasy books, is stubborn and bit arrogant. I wouldn't say I liked Deidre; she wasn't developed enough, in my opinion.

The one character I liked was Hamish. He is a shapeshifter.

And what are fantasy books without a warrior, who is great with a sword and a savant know it all, mercenary? The mercenary’s name was Flint.

I had fun with the characters. This is one thing I can say the author did well. He does need to work on the character arcs. On the other hand, this is a series, so I hope that the character arcs will be developed in the other books.

But the one thing that I hated was the author calling interlude chapters to what I thought were some of the most important chapters in the story. Those interlude chapters were integral to the story. They give us a look into the empire's inner workings and where the spy named Lukas shows us a better picture of the world-building. Please, for the love of all that is great in literature, don’t call them interludes. These chapters are the meat and potatoes of the worldbuilding of the story. Lukas was a character that was so interesting, but I still can’t understand how he fits in this story because he needed to be molded a bit more.

Style.

A.J., you have so much potential, but you needed to read a book or two on show and not tell. Also, send your books to a developmental editor and do a lot of rewrites. And then send your books to a copy editor before you publish them; it will help. Furthermore, in my humble unsolicited opinion, I will say, your writing style reminds me of a very naked and raw writing style as George R.R. Martin.

Why I gave it a two-star? This book had a lot of potential; I liked some of the characters and the way the author writes. However, he cut many corners, and it had too many technical problems.

And for now, I think I said enough.… (meer)