The Blackfire Chronicles Volume I 

by Mark Sowers

A review by INFAMOUS🦀

 

Volume 1 of The Blackfire Chronicles was the debut novel of author Mark Sowers, and frankly, there are well-established ‘seasoned’ writers out there who fail to create stories this good and compelling. As a debut novel, TBC has its flaws, mainly due to ‘pace’, but at least we have a story and characters cohesive and captivating enough to make us want to flip pages. I am sure as Sowers keeps developing and improving as a writer those minor issues can be fixed. On the positive, if the story and/or characters were weak then we would have had bigger issues to deal with.

Like a few other fantasy writers I’ve covered recently, Sowers’ narrative departs a great deal from the typical tropes of the genre. Though ‘magic’ is actively involved in this world, the story doesn’t revolve around who wears a certain piece of magic jewelry, or who yields a certain magic sword, or who holds a certain magic staff. This magic system is more nuanced. The characters moving within the story take center stage, not some magic trinkets.

PLOT:

Everything begins with our two main characters, Reval and Arval, two boys forced into indentured labor at one of the four mysterious digging sites scattered to the four corners of the world. The enslaved laborers themselves do not even know what they are digging for, exactly, but whatever it is it must be of the highest priority since the monarch has been putting so much effort and so many resources into it. Reval has been working at the site for so long he has no knowledge of the world beyond his work environment. Even things like foods other than the slop he is fed by the guards are foreign subjects to him. Arval gets recruited (or rather forced) into working at the site at a later time, and it is through him that Reval’s curiosity for the world beyond the depressing digging site begins to grow. The two boys quickly become good friends and, one day, as they are digging they find access to a hidden abode where they come in contact with the spirit of a character from the past who enlightens Reval on what this digging site and three similar similar digging sites are all about and how the use of magic was  banished a long time ago, though the time for its return is now near.  In the process, Reval is also granted formidable magic powers and he and Arval manage to escape. Thus their real adventure begins.

Obviously there is more to this, but since we want to keep spoilers to a minimum, when you pick up a copy you will soon discover that there are many supporting characters and plot developments intelligently adopted into the story as to not bore us to death with yet another ‘same old same old’ fantasy book.

 

PACE:

Overall, my only negative statement would be in regards to the pace in some segments of the book. Sometimes it feels as though Sowers is trying to write too much about things that really have nothing to do with the story itself. Details about some characters that are quite superfluous or irrelevant, for example, do not make for a smooth reading flow. Make no mistake, TBC is not ‘slow’ overall, in fact, most of it moves quite briskly. But there are some descriptive paragraphs that could have been more succinct or omitted altogether, making the pace more uniform overall, rather than at times feeling like we are walking through a swamp.

 

CONCLUSIONS:

I get excited every time I read a book like TBC because it shows me that the over-saturated genre of fantasy still holds a few positive surprises every once in a while. I already bought Volume 2 because it is always interesting to watch an author (hopefully) improve from his debut novel to his follow-up novel. I am sure Sowers is a smart writer and he was able to use this first book as a learning experience to turn around and hit us with an even better sequel.

I know I look forward to it!

 

🦀