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!

🦀

Heir to the Sundered Crown – The Sundered Crown Saga Book One by M.S. Olney

A review by INFAMOUS🦀

Book 1 of Heir to the Sundered Crown is a well-written, enthralling fantasy tale that I found quite enjoyable for different reasons. Let’s face it, it is very difficult nowadays to write fantasy that manages to capture our full attention. This is due to several reasons: 

1.  The market is oversaturated with fantasy books and if the author is not well known, chances are they will fly under the radar of most readers.
2. Most current fantasy stories today are a ‘reassembling of parts’ from Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, and Harry Potter. It’s the norm for modern fantasy writers to just copy and paste aspects of those fantasy cult classics without adding anything fresh or original to them.
3. We have progressive modernists who want to use the genre with the application of ‘modern thinking’ so that the ‘fantasy’ element becomes just a veneer, with the essence of the stories becoming a sad reflection of the deranged post-modernist agenda.

HTSC manages to offer enough exciting content while avoiding to fall into the category of stereotypical fantasy/adventure novel. 

PLOT:

The entire story centers around the assassination of the royal family of the kingdom of Delfinia. The assassins, however, fail to find and murder the young prince who, thanks to Davik and Elena, is taken to safety at an undisclosed location. This coup leads to civil unrest and skirmishes among local barons, all vying for power.

However, the mastermind behind this plot is a supernatural foe greater than any mortal being, and that is our mage apprentice, Luxon gets introduced to us. 

Luxon is made aware that he comes from a lineage of powerful mages and, along with a team composed of knights, nightblades, and witch hunters, will play a key role in finding the young prince and rightful heir to the throne, which is key to avoid the legions of darkness to breach the Void and take over the world.

THE TOLKIEN EFFECT:

As I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but think of Lord of The Rings at some points. 

For example the friendship between apprentice mage Luxon and his buddy Yepert (a rotund, jolly friend from the mage apprentice school) reminded me very much of the same relationship we see with Frodo and Sam. Yepert even finds courage and strength when it’s needed most just like Sam, while Luxon, just like Frodo, is the most reflective of the two.

Also lines like “Please don’t turn me in anything unnatural” too reminded me very much of what we read in Tolkien. Not a major issue but it speaks volume of the massive influence Tolkien still has on modern fantasy writing.

MODERN EUPHEMISMS:

If there is one area I think the author could improve is in the implementation of modern euphemisms. 

Phrases like:

• All in all, I’d say that was a good day’s work

• And none of us died, which is always a bonus

• intelligence network

• until the cows come home

The above could easily be replaced with more evocative alternatives. That would help readers be drawn further into this fantasy world. Just because a term CAN be used doesn’t necessarily mean that it SHOULD be used, within the context of this genre.

CONCLUSIONS:

All in all, book 1 of HTSC delivers a fun, action-packed fantasy adventure for die-hard fans of the genre with heavy Tolkienian influence. I suggest you pick this book or maybe buy it as a gift and perhaps get your family and friends into discovering the magic and excitement that books like this one can offer. 

Book 2 will probably get reviewed at a later date since I’m curious to know what could possibly happen in the plot after the seemingly decisive victory of good over evil we read in book 1!

🦀

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!

🦀