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briar_gray's review
I'll likely pick this back up as I hate buying books and not finishing them, but another genre has caught my eye and it desprately needs my attention. I stopped reading for a long while and I think its because I was forcing myself to finish this book instead of reading what I wanted. Its a mistake I make a lot, and as much as I like story graph I think it can reinforce that habit.
ethias's review against another edition
5.0
Edit 10/5/23 I am changing my rating to 5 stars because I can’t stop thinking about this book
———
I have incredibly mixed feelings on this one.
I think it should be about 300-400 pages shorter. It got quite repetitive and clunky in a ton of places, causing me to skim quite a bit.
The language was kind of juvenile in places.
I absolutely HATE the decision to make a sexual abuse survivor into a serial rapist. I don’t like how constant the sexual violence towards the female characters was. Of our three main women, one is an “evil seductress” which is just incredibly old and tiresome, another is the “pure priestess” which is also incredibly old and tiresome, and the last is the “vulnerable/devoted wife” who is disabled/disfigured and seems to exist solely to love her husband and do whatever he wants and push his story forward and be a damsel in distress constantly, which as I’m sure you can guess is incredibly old and tiresome.
I think this author has a ton to learn about writing women, about writing women respectfully, and about how to make a world dark in ways that don’t involve sexual violence toward women and girls.
He has a ton to learn about writing disabled people, about respecting disabled people, and about how to not treat disabled people and their mistreatment as a stepping stone to their abled counterparts plot advancement.
THAT ALL SAID….
By the time I hit around 500 pages I was enjoying myself. I love villainous fucked up main characters and revenge plots and assholes being proven wrong. The only character that gave me absolutely nothing the entire book was Arion. He’s boring. The absolutely horrific acts of violence and revenge enacted by both Corin and Allana at the end of the book were *chefs kiss*. Absolutely ate that shit up. Love a good corruption arc. And Leanna allowing herself to be burned just to explode in light and evoke her own god with stigmata? Yes. Delightful. Fuck it up.
This was an INCREDIBLY rough start with some authorial choices that I absolutely despise, choices that the author needs to learn from and reflect upon and use as fuel to do better in future books. But by the end he hooked me and I can respect that.
———
I have incredibly mixed feelings on this one.
I think it should be about 300-400 pages shorter. It got quite repetitive and clunky in a ton of places, causing me to skim quite a bit.
The language was kind of juvenile in places.
I absolutely HATE the decision to make a sexual abuse survivor into a serial rapist. I don’t like how constant the sexual violence towards the female characters was. Of our three main women, one is an “evil seductress” which is just incredibly old and tiresome, another is the “pure priestess” which is also incredibly old and tiresome, and the last is the “vulnerable/devoted wife” who is disabled/disfigured and seems to exist solely to love her husband and do whatever he wants and push his story forward and be a damsel in distress constantly, which as I’m sure you can guess is incredibly old and tiresome.
I think this author has a ton to learn about writing women, about writing women respectfully, and about how to make a world dark in ways that don’t involve sexual violence toward women and girls.
He has a ton to learn about writing disabled people, about respecting disabled people, and about how to not treat disabled people and their mistreatment as a stepping stone to their abled counterparts plot advancement.
THAT ALL SAID….
By the time I hit around 500 pages I was enjoying myself. I love villainous fucked up main characters and revenge plots and assholes being proven wrong. The only character that gave me absolutely nothing the entire book was Arion. He’s boring. The absolutely horrific acts of violence and revenge enacted by both Corin and Allana at the end of the book were *chefs kiss*. Absolutely ate that shit up. Love a good corruption arc. And Leanna allowing herself to be burned just to explode in light and evoke her own god with stigmata? Yes. Delightful. Fuck it up.
This was an INCREDIBLY rough start with some authorial choices that I absolutely despise, choices that the author needs to learn from and reflect upon and use as fuel to do better in future books. But by the end he hooked me and I can respect that.
desolation73's review against another edition
4.0
Its a long chunky book coming in at 700 pages but one that you wont regret putting your time and effort in and if you do well you can blame me!
mom2qandk's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.5
Interesting plot, but so poorly written, and absolutely terrible dialogue.
qjbrown96's review against another edition
5.0
Absolutely phenomenal. I love character driven stories and this is top tier for me and probably the best self published book I’ve read and by far the best Prologue ever written of any book ever. I promise!
Another thing I like is animal supporting characters. John Gwynne and Robin Hobb do a great job of this and now I can include Daniel Jackson in that category. Blackpaw is basically a Werewolf, I refuse to accept any other word for this bad ass creature companion of my favorite character in the story, Corin.
Every character has a power that mostly revolve around mind control. Corin has the ability to effect your motor skills and he can also see what you see. He’s a 5’3” dweeb, but as most fantasy stories go, he is much more important than you think
Arion has the ability to make your movements slow which makes him a warrior to be reckoned with. He also seems to be in love at first sight with both the female main cast so this might get juicy in the sequel.
Leanna is a highly devoted religious fanatic and also has the ability to heal mortal wounds. Although she has to do it secretly because unexplained phenomena is considered a heretic act and she will be burned alive.
Alana is a very decisive for the most annoying of reasons. She is very beautiful and is the daughter of a prostitute. She vows to live a better life, yet starting in chapter 2 of her story she finds she has the ability to get people to do what she wants by messing with their head to get them to have sex with her. It’s a bit ridiculous and uncomfortable because the entire story is her basically raping men to fall under their protection. But people are being very dramatic and saying this is sexist because you wouldn’t write a male character this way. I agree that it would definitely be more weird to have a man raping women, but to call it sexist is ridiculous. By that standard it would be sexist to have men on the cover of romance books with their shirt off because “you wouldn’t have a naked female on the cover”. Everyone needs to quit being lame and just enjoy the book and ignore the minor parts you don’t like, or just don’t read it and quit being an ass to the people who enjoyed it.
I’ve also found out that the author supposedly is blocking people who give 1 star reviews. That is next level petty and definitely serious narcissism but this is a review of the book not the author. Although I don’t see how anyone in the world could give this 1 star anyway.
If you can overlook the 2 negative qualities of the book/author then give this amazing book a shot!
Another thing I like is animal supporting characters. John Gwynne and Robin Hobb do a great job of this and now I can include Daniel Jackson in that category. Blackpaw is basically a Werewolf, I refuse to accept any other word for this bad ass creature companion of my favorite character in the story, Corin.
Every character has a power that mostly revolve around mind control. Corin has the ability to effect your motor skills and he can also see what you see. He’s a 5’3” dweeb, but as most fantasy stories go, he is much more important than you think
Arion has the ability to make your movements slow which makes him a warrior to be reckoned with. He also seems to be in love at first sight with both the female main cast so this might get juicy in the sequel.
Leanna is a highly devoted religious fanatic and also has the ability to heal mortal wounds. Although she has to do it secretly because unexplained phenomena is considered a heretic act and she will be burned alive.
Alana is a very decisive for the most annoying of reasons. She is very beautiful and is the daughter of a prostitute. She vows to live a better life, yet starting in chapter 2 of her story she finds she has the ability to get people to do what she wants by messing with their head to get them to have sex with her. It’s a bit ridiculous and uncomfortable because the entire story is her basically raping men to fall under their protection. But people are being very dramatic and saying this is sexist because you wouldn’t write a male character this way. I agree that it would definitely be more weird to have a man raping women, but to call it sexist is ridiculous. By that standard it would be sexist to have men on the cover of romance books with their shirt off because “you wouldn’t have a naked female on the cover”. Everyone needs to quit being lame and just enjoy the book and ignore the minor parts you don’t like, or just don’t read it and quit being an ass to the people who enjoyed it.
I’ve also found out that the author supposedly is blocking people who give 1 star reviews. That is next level petty and definitely serious narcissism but this is a review of the book not the author. Although I don’t see how anyone in the world could give this 1 star anyway.
If you can overlook the 2 negative qualities of the book/author then give this amazing book a shot!
rohan_rohan's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
noteworthy_fiction's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
tabathastomes's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of my new favorite books and the fact that it’s a debut novel is absolutely shocking. It is honestly perfection. There was not a single chapter that I was bored nor did I feel like anything could be removed. This is a very character driven book, and each of them have such interesting arcs so far. The only thing to be aware of is that the plot is just being set up in this one, I personally don’t mind this and think that any fantasy reader would enjoy this regardless because of how absolutely fantastic these characters are. (Corin is my fav)
_bookdrag0n's review against another edition
5.0
I am keeping this 100% spoiler free because I think this is a book that fantasy lovers definitely need to read. I picked up this book because I had been following the author on social media for a while and wanted to read it the moment I had an opening in my reading schedule and I wanted to be able to take my time with it. While its thickness may appear daunting, it was an easy read that maintained good pacing throughout, without any moment that dragged on unnecessarily. I was hooked right from the prologue
The character and world building was incredibly done, and while I normally don't prefer a multiple POV writing method, Daniel pulled it off fluidly allowing all characters to be well developed and as readers, we get to see their individual storylines come to life. I found myself fully immersed in each character's story without any of them feeling less important than the others.
This was a fantastic debut novel by Daniel and I cannot wait to see where this saga goes from here. After reading this on my Kindle, I now have the urge and need to have a physical copy of this on my shelf.
The character and world building was incredibly done, and while I normally don't prefer a multiple POV writing method, Daniel pulled it off fluidly allowing all characters to be well developed and as readers, we get to see their individual storylines come to life. I found myself fully immersed in each character's story without any of them feeling less important than the others.
This was a fantastic debut novel by Daniel and I cannot wait to see where this saga goes from here. After reading this on my Kindle, I now have the urge and need to have a physical copy of this on my shelf.