A review by INFAMOUS🦀

 

I remember the very first time I watched ‘French New Wave’ movie Last Year in Marienbad and instantly feeling so aware that I was witnessing something original and unprecedented in film-making. That same feeling I got when I first read Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter (link); I knew then this was ground-breaking content. That was years ago…

Fast-forward to today, and the same phenomenon occurred to me as I read Tales & Treasures, the fantasy novel debut by Rob Mortell. 

It’s not the norm in this day and age to grab a fantasy-based novel and be surprised by its originality or uniqueness. In an over-saturated marketplace of Tolkien’s ripoffs, finding fiction writing like that found in Tales & Treasure is a rarity, and this goes as a massive credit to the author R. Mortell.

 

AMBIENCE :

As Mortell says: 

 

“Like many fantasy authors it started with Tolkien, but my more modern influences are Patrick Rothfus and Scott Lynch. The way they blend interesting characters with high-quality prose is unmatched.”

 

The way this story unfolds, the way the characters behave and interact all contributes to create an exclusive ambience, and it is ‘unmatched’. It is fantasy but you’re not going to see fire-spitting dragons or wizards shooting lightning from their hands. Instead, it is subtle, refined, at times corky, and it very much reminds me of the French cinema of the late ‘60s with characters that feel ‘ordinary-but-not-really’; characters that make us laugh even in situations which are not laughable at all.

 

PLOT:

Instead of the story building around a king, or a knight, or a mage, it builds around a bard, which is a brilliant idea and instantly sets up the tone for a different kind of fantasy ride. Vatis is our bard, and he has a ‘dark past’. His fate entangles with that of a treasure hunter, Vidmar, former member of the royal army, also with a dark past of his own. The two of them are subsequently joined by 12-year-old orphan girl Mia, and Kamet, former army pal of Vidmar.

Why would a bard tag along with a treasure hunter? Simple: Vatis feels that Vidmar’s current task of recovering the crown of Slavanes Greco, the crown of the true king of Emre, will provide all the content necessary to write his next big story, which would make him the most prominent bard in all of Emre. But what transpires is a fate that none of the players could possibly predict. Both Vatis and Vidmar are in for a very unexpected adventure, as they follow the vague clues to find the coveted crown.

 

CHARACTERS:

This is for me the high point of this book, but also the low point of it. Let me explain:

These are some of the most lively, ‘3D’ characters I’ve read about in most new fantasy literature. The way Vatis, Vidmar, and even supporting characters like Mia come to life is truly something that must be experienced firsthand! We feel engaged with them from the first to the last page. Their large spectrum of emotions, their sense of humor, even their sense of hopelessness at times is so well timed by Mortell that several times I had to pause, breathe, and think about what I’d just read! Just fantastic characters all around!

 

THE NEGATIVES:

As always we gotta mention the good of course, but also the bad and the ugly as well. Fortunately this book does not contain any ‘ugly’ to speak of but it does contain some ‘bad’:

• Language: there is an extreme amount of profanity and crude language that was not needed for these characters. They already shine as they are, there was no need to have them drop so many F words and say so many crude ‘mamma’s jokes’. Virtually every character except for young Mia cusses like a sailor without adding one iota of richness to their established personalities. Not sure why Mortell wanted to go that route but this hardly works in fiction except in some sci-fi and detective novels for example. All that does here is cheapen the finished work in my opinion.
• The bard’s performances: bards are supposed to be performers even when they are simply telling a story to an audience. If they narrate their stories in standard prose you no longer feel like you’re listening to a performance. I’m not saying that our bard Vatis should be more like Shakespeare but even a simple meter tweak to the writing could create that difference between ‘Vatis speaking’ and ‘Vatis performing’.

 

CONCLUSIONS:

All in all, despite the negative aspects I just mentioned, this story and characters are too original to give the book less than 5 stars. As a reviewer sometimes I find myself torn between giving a book 4/5 stars and 5/5 stars. If a book is not ‘perfect’ in certain aspects but it oozes with originality and ‘3D’ characters I might still give it 5/5 because I want to encourage the author to keep pursuing this and to encourage readers to buy and read the book.

I hope my advice is taken as constructive criticism but also I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy most aspects of this fantastic debut novel!

🦀