Author: marianlthorpe

Not content with two careers as a research scientist and an educator, Marian L Thorpe decided to go back to what she’d always wanted to do and be a writer. Author of the alternative world medieval series Empire’s Legacy, Marian also has published short stories and poetry. Her life-long interest in Roman and post-Roman European history informs her novels, while her avocations of landscape archaeology and birding provide background to her settings. As well as writing and editing professionally, Marian oversees Arboretum Press, a small publishing imprint run as a collective. Marian is currently writing Empire's Heir, the sixth title in the Empire's Legacy series.

The Surface’s End, by David Joel Stevenson: A Review

The Surface's EndJonah, a young man in late adolescence, is responsible for providing his family with game, the major source of meat in their post-apocalyptic world. He’s found good hunting grounds at the edge of the dead zone, the desert known as the Deathlands, but even there the game is growing thin.

A wounded buck, fleeing the pain of Jonah’s arrow, leaves the shelter of the woods to run into the desert; Jonah, who cannot waste the kill, follows. Near where the buck finally falls, he finds a metal wheel…a wheel which is opens a door into another world – not a magical world: this is no rabbit-hole – but an underground city, peopled with the descendants of those who fled a ravaged Earth many generations earlier.

This is the premise of The Surface’s End, a young-adult dystopic science-fiction novel by David Joel Stevenson. I finished the book over two days: it’s short, at about 139 pages on my Kindle app, but it was also compulsively readable. Both the homesteading world of Jonah and his family and their fellow villagers, and the mole-rat like existence of the underground inhabitants were internally consistent and plausible, although both were slightly too one-dimensional, with no hint of strife or disagreement within the homesteaders and no positive aspects to the underground world.

SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT!

Having the ‘wildlands’ adolescent discover the ‘city’, rather than the other way around, was a nice twist on the young-adult dystopic meme. The inevitable romance between Jonah and Talitha, the girl from underground, is handled sweetly, Jonah’s uncertainty and awkwardness particularly.

For the most part Stevenson’s writing flows smoothly (and occasionally brilliantly, as in the line, referring to the Deathlands: ‘He took his first step into the undiscovered lands.’, an echo of Hamlet describing death as ‘the undiscovered country.’). A minor niggle was that I found the tone and pacing of the narrative did not always reflect the tension and action of the story.

My only other niggle with the story was the scene in which Jonah and Talitha watch a digital feed of the deathbed confession of one of the original founders of the underground city. While it is important, a turning point in the story, the confession goes on too long, unbroken by the reactions and emotions of the two young people watching it.

All in all, though, I’m giving The Surface’s End four stars. It’s a worthy addition to the young adult dystopia genre (personally, I think it would make a good film), and it has enough originality to make it stand out from the crowd.

The author provided me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are mine alone.

The Raven, by Aderyn Wood: A Release-Day Review

The-RavenIn a Bronze Age world, a child is born on the first night of Ilun, eight days of darkness. Orphaned, outcast, she is marked for sacrifice, but the shaman defies the tribe’s leaders to keep her alive. He has seen in her power beyond anything he has known, power the tribe may need some day. But will she be allowed to use it?

This is the premise of The Raven, by Aderyn Wood. I read an advance copy of The Raven over the course of three days. I would likely have read it in one in my younger days, when the luxury of reading all day was possible,which should tell you how much I liked it. Wood has crafted a believable, internally consistent fantasy world, with strong characters. The story is a classic conflict between choosing and using magical powers of good and evil, and as such has similarities with other stories in the fantasy genre, but it is neither excessively cliched nor stereotypical.

The tribal, semi-nomadic world that Iluna is born to bears some similarities to Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series, and some to Guy Gavriel Kay’s Dalrei in The Fionavar Tapestry. But these are similarities only; this world stands on its own. Unusually, much time in the book is given to Iluna’s childhood (and therefore that of other key characters), a plot device which promotes both character development and world-building. In Wood’s competent hands the dramas and conflicts of childhood are woven into the larger challenges Iluna’s people face, and as the children mature, the complexity of those challenges increases, mirroring their understanding and role in them.

As Iluna grows to maturity, the scope of her world grows too, and she realizes that her gifts may be of interest and use to her whole network of tribes, and not just her own. Her choices and behaviour are those you might expect from a young girl on the edges of her society but aware of her unique powers, adding to the plausibility – and the tension – of the plot.

I had a few small niggles. There are a few wobbles in the consistency of voice, especially in dialogue, with modern sayings – “Stay safe” mixed in with archaic language – “…recent years have been ill-omened for us.” Wood uses ‘mountain lion’ in the first half of the book and ‘mountain cat’ in the second, apparently for the same species. And, perhaps most seriously, I found the description of the penultimate crisis, a battle scene, unconvincing, lacking in tension and broken by the statement “The fight wasn’t over yet.” Here, I felt, the author forgot the writer’s adage ‘Show, don’t tell.’

Overall, though, The Raven earns a very solid 4 stars. It was an enjoyable read, and one that I really didn’t want to put down. I don’t say that about many books. Available from Amazon.

The author provided me with a pre-publication copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are mine alone.

Books of Influence: An Occasional Series

This is the first in an occasional series of posts about the books – mostly classic fantasy and science fiction – that have most greatly influenced my own writing and world-building.  First among these are The Chronicles of Tornor, by Elizabeth A. Lynn.

The Chronicles of Tornor, published in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, consist of three books: Watchtower, The Dancers of Arun, and The Northern Girl. All take place in Arun, a land of city-states and northern keeps, grasslands and mountains, a land where certain psi powers, dance and warfare as two faces of one discipline, and a wider acceptance of differing forms of sexuality and love evolve over the several hundred years separating the three books. The first book in the series, Watchtower, won the World Fantasy Award in 1979.

Hailed at the time of publication as “an adventure story for humanists and feminists” (Joanna Russ) author Elizabeth A. Lynn’s spare, evocative prose and finely tuned characters made me long to be in Arun, but more importantly taught me how less is more in writing. The facets of sexuality revealed in her characters in this trilogy (and in two other of her books from the same general time, The Sardonyx Net and A Different Light), while common-place now, were still challenging readers at the time they were published. Important to her world (and ours), the sexuality of her characters is not an issue; it is an unremarkable part of the society and culture of Arun.

Each book can stand alone, but all are linked by the land in which they take place, the lineage of the characters, and a set of cards resembling Tarot cards. While there is physical action in all three books, it takes a back stage to the psychological and emotional change and growth that happens in the protagonists; it is these battles that are the focus of the stories, and hold the meaning. Lynn brings the story full-circle over the three books, beginning and ending at the northern keep of Tornor.

I first read this series in my early-to-mid twenties – now over thirty years ago- and of all the books I have read and will write about in this occasional series, The Chronicles of Tornor had the most direct influence on my own fictional land and some of the themes explored in the Empire’s Legacy series.  My paperbacks are tattered and torn, and one is a replacement, but they are books that will always have a place on my shelves.

Master, by Thomas M. Watt: A Review

What happens when dream and reality become one and the same, and you have no control over either?master

Ex-footballer Phil Gordon has chosen a life as husband, father, and pool cleaner over the possibility of NFL fame and fortune. He’s doing ok with the inevitable negative comments this decision engenders, but when a figure calling himself Master invades his dreams, making the same negative comments and threatening Phil’s wife, he begins to be frightened. In quickly escalating action, it becomes clear that Master has control of Phil and his family in his waking life as well as in his dreams, but is he real, or a construction of Phil’s subconscious, channelling repressed doubts and regrets about his life choices?

Master is a short book, 139 pages, with rapid, sometimes violent action, told from the first-person viewpoint of the protagonist. Its tone fits the confusion and fragmentation of Phil’s sudden immersion into a world gone mad, a writing style that is the equivalent of the hand-held camera effects of various recent films. In many ways, the book reminded me of a film script, strong on dialogue and descriptions of action, brief in descriptions of setting and characters, and bringing the action to a finale that completes the story but allows for a sequel.

Phil’s actions – and those of Master – unfortunately do not strain credibility in today’s world; the almost casual violence Master demands of Phil and practices himself exists in headlines weekly. Phil’s insistence that he is not a man of violence has little influence on his actions when his family is threatened; his motivation is clear. I had more difficulty fully understanding the motivation and behaviour of Ashley, an old girlfriend of Phil’s who is enmeshed in the unfolding events.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT!

My niggles? The technology that lies behind Master’s manipulation of Phil’s dreams is not really fully explained, and I felt was glossed over; a more detailed explanation of the technology and its effects could have added to the tension and drama of the narrative. The first half of the penultimate chapter reads more as an epilogue, tying up loose ends in brief explanatory paragraphs, before returning to the story. In addition, there were a few small production errors in the copy I was sent, but no more than are found in many books, both traditionally and electronically published.

Master will appeal to readers who like fast-paced thrillers with a strong psychological aspect. My rating is three stars. Master is available from Amazon.

The author provided me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are mine alone

Prison of Souls, by Xander Gray: A Review

Prison of SoulsStephen Hawking, Ray Kurzweil, Randal Koene: all these scientists believe, to differing degrees, that it may (or will) be possible to upload the human mind to a computer. And what then?

One answer – one terrifying and convincing answer – to that question is the central premise of Xander Gray’s complex and intricate science-fiction novel Prison of Souls. Based on cutting-edge actual and theoretical research in quantum physics and mind uploading, Prison of Souls challenged me to believe the science and its implications, and yet at the same time proposed a logical and frightening outcome. This duality – fitting for a novel based on quantum research – kept me turning pages long after I should have put the book down and gone to sleep.

Prison of Souls received top rankings in all the categories I use to review books. Gray writes very well: his prose flows naturally, and his skill in describing everyday scenes, and contrasting them with the unreality of what is happening to the protagonist adds to the sense that what is real in this book is fractured and fluid, not conforming to commonly accepted versions of reality, like the particle/wave duality of light.

If I have one reservation about Prison of Souls, it is that the science is complex and difficult, but Gray uses dialogue to explain it in ways that make it reasonably comprehensible. The moral questions raised in Prison of Souls are real ones, and if Koene and Kurzweil are right in their belief that the uploading of human minds to computer networks will occur in the lifetimes of those who are now under fifty, then they are moral questions for which we currently have no answers, and have barely begun to consider.

I’m giving Prison of Souls five stars; it’s an outstanding debut novel. Available from Amazon.

The author provided me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review. The opinions stated here are mine alone.

A Sincere Thank You

Do what you love, and the work will come your way.

In the months that have passed since I officially retired from my salaried job (as opposed to the previous eight months, when I was off on medical leave), I’ve gone from a part-time writer, struggling to find the time to work with my editor and get Empire’s Daughter published, to a full-time writer, or, at least, someone involved in the indie writing world full-time.

I soon learned after retirement that I wasn’t cut out to do nothing but work on my own book. Perhaps because of years of having to juggle different projects, my ability to concentrate on one thing is limited to a couple of hours. After that, whatever I do probably isn’t worth the time it takes. So I gave it some thought: what aspects of my previous job(s) had I really enjoyed? What could I transfer to my new life?

The common themes going back through two different careers were these: writing, editing and reviewing. Over those careers, I’d written, reviewed, and critiqued everything from applications for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of grants for scientific research, various master’s and doctoral theses (my husband’s M.Sc. thesis was classic, with the opening sentence going on for a page and half; luckily for our marriage, he’s a quick learner), and papers for submission to scientific journals. When I switched careers into education, I did the same for curriculum, writing prompts, policy and procedure documents, more grant applications, major reports to the government….But all this was non-fiction. Could it be transferred to fiction?

I’ve been reading since I was three, and have read (and continue to read) everything from classics to cyberpunk, from literary fiction to Lovecraft, and everything in-between. There is no better way to learn to write well – or recognize good writing – than to read and read and read. So, yes, I thought I could recognize good writing (and good storytelling, not always the same thing), and offer both fair and useful critiques.

So, as regular readers of this blog know, I started to write reviews. I offered editorial services, either beta-reads or full edits. Six weeks later, and my days (and both my review and editorial lists) are full. I spend my working hours in chunks of reading, reviewing, editing, and my own writing (plus a university course in a completely different area, to keep my scientific mind alive).

My own writing benefits greatly from this. Both in the reviewing and editing I am constantly reminded of what is good writing, what moves stories along, gives insight into characters, describes a situation or a location effectively. In looking at other writer’s work with a critical eye, I’ve become a better critic of my own work. In reading sentences or paragraphs or whole books that delight me, I learn more about what makes good writing – in my mind, that’s an apprenticeship without an end date.

So, to all of you who have offered me books to review, or trusted me with editorial services, thank you. I hope what I’m giving back is of value, but please know: you’re giving me work I love, and work I learn from. It’s very much appreciated.

Open Mike Night: Thoughts from the Morning After

As promised, here’s my report on Open Mike night for my writer’s group. Now, I should explain that my writer’s group isn’t, I don’t believe, typical. We don’t read to each other, or critique each others’ work. What we have is a space to write, coffee, tea, water and wi-fi provided, and a ‘den mother’ who strictly maintains the ‘no conversation, no phones’ rules.

So while we (mostly) recognize each other, we have no idea what anyone else is working on. So this yearly open-mike night is a chance to get to know each other a bit, as well as read our work. We started with drinks and munchies and conversation, and after half an hour or so of that, our ‘den mother’ got us started. I volunteered to read first, since that meant, firstly, I got it over with, and secondly, that I could then really listen to other work, instead of being nervous about my own reading.

Lights in the face, can’t see the room (this is good); my voice wavering a little at first but then steadying. I read my piece – an excerpt from Reverse Migration, chosen by all of you who voted here or on Twitter or privately e-mailed me. It sounds good, the words strong and flowing. The applause is hearty, more than polite, I think. And I don’t fall down (or up) the stairs.

About ten or twelve people read: award winning authors who make a living at this, and aspiring authors, some of whom read their rejection letters. Poems, short stories, self-help, memoir. A room full of talent, from twenty-something to seventy-something. Supportive, encouraging, genuinely interested in what each other is writing. Nice people. And now we know each other all a bit better.

Thanks to everyone who voted, and to those of you who asked for a report. The world is a better place when we listen to each others’ voices.

Immaculate Conception by Guilherme Solari: A Review

Immaculate ConceptionImmaculate Conception (Cybersampa #1) is a cyberpunk novella by Brazilian journalist Guilherme Solari. The setting is the megalopolis of Megasampa, a couple of hundred years in the future, a sprawling, dystopic city that has swallowed Rio and Sao Paulo, ruled by corporations, dark and divided. A brutal murder introduces us to Cascavel, the protagonist, a man with a mysterious past, multiple synthetic parts, and a film-noir-detective attitude.

Immaculate Conception is in part an homage to the cyberpunk world of Philip K. Dick, and references to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the story on which the film Blade Runner is based) are embedded in the story, as are references to other dystopic classics. These references help ground the story in a classic cyberpunk world without detracting from the new creation of Megasampa.

The world-building is solid, pulling from established cyberpunk and other dystopic themes, but the South American setting gives it a different life. The characters are not quite three-dimensional, but are as developed as many characters in this genre. The plot is a mix of film noir, classic horror, and dystopian sci-fi, and for the most part maintains its momentum and tension well. Descriptions of the locations effectively evoke the desolation of Novo Bronx as well as the shiny artificiality of corporate headquarters.

English, I assume, is not Solari’s first language, and while most of the writing is competent, there are enough mistakes in spelling, grammar and voice to detract from the flow of the prose. These could be easily corrected in a second edition of the e-book. My other quibble is the description of the novella on Amazon as meant for the 12-18 age group; the subject of the book and its violent murders, as well as the reading level, suggest to me the lower age limit here is too low. This may be a difficulty with Amazon’s classifications and not the author’s intent, to be fair.

Overall, I am giving Immaculate Conception three stars; it would have been 3 1/2 except for the language errors. I should say cyberpunk is not a genre I have read widely, and most of what I have read is by either Dick or William Gibson, so I may be a bit out of date with the evolution of this type of writing. Immaculate Conception is the first in a planned series called Cybersampa, and I believe they will find a satisfied readership.

The author provided me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. The opinions here are mine alone.

Open Mike Night: Help Me Decide What to Read

The Open Mike night for my writer’s group was postponed until this coming Tuesday.  So I’ve had two extra weeks to decide what to read, and I’m still waffling.  I have five minutes in which to read one piece.  I can read an excerpt from my novel, Empire’s Daughter, or, an excerpt from my non-fiction book-in-progress, Reverse Migration: A Discourse on the Spirit of Place.  The two excerpts are below.  Please let me know what you think by using the comment section!

Excerpt from Empire’s Daughter:

At our mid-day break, Turlo offered to teach Garth to use the hunting bow. The day had turned glorious, the sky a clear blue with a light breeze. Garth accepted with alacrity.

“I’ll come to watch,” Bren said, standing. Garth nodded a welcome. He clearly liked Bren. After my talk with Casyn, I could see Bren’s distant manner in a new light. I no longer felt rejected by him, but I remained ambivalent.

“And you, Lena?” Turlo offered. I shook my head. My monthly bleeding had begun, and a general lassitude had settled over me. I stretched out in the warmth and drowsed as the hunters went off over a ridge. After a while, I stirred to see Casyn sitting on a nearby rock, a mug of tea in his hands. I rolled over and sat up.

“I thought you had gone hunting,” I said.

“Four is too many.”

“May I ask something? About Turlo?”

“Bren this morning, Turlo now?” he teased.

“It seems to me that Turlo is much like Garth. He is happier hunting, or wandering the wilds, than anything else, yet he holds a commission and serves the Empire.” I stopped, not sure how to continue.

“You are wondering why Turlo became an officer while Garth chose to desert,” he said gently. “There is no easy answer to that. Turlo, for all his love of the wild, came willingly. His father was on Wall duty, a scout, and his tales of that life probably had the boy enthralled. Also, the Wall is a place where Turlo’s skills and interests are needed and encouraged. By the time he came to the cadet camps, he was already a talented borders scout. But Turlo is also a born leader. He understands men much as he understands animals, instinctively, and we fostered that in him. Garth is a different man, and his opportunities were different. If (his father) had been in a borders regiment, then, yes, perhaps he would have reconciled to the army, but perhaps not. I doubt that Garth will ever be truly happy leading men, but I think he will teach boys with care and discipline and with a greater sensitivity than he received.” He sighed. “I am not sure I have answered your question, Lena, but it is difficult to talk about what might have been when we are speaking of men. I prefer analyzing strategy.”

“I’ve noticed,” I said dryly. “Although you’re not quite as bad as Bren.” He laughed. “I still wish things had been different for Garth.”

“And for yourself, and for Maya,” he said gently. “As I do. But we cannot shape the circumstances to fit our lives, only our lives to fit the circumstances. What defines us, as men and women, is how we respond to those circumstances. Courage comes in many forms, Lena, and I think perhaps Garth, in trying to reconcile his nature to the expectations of the Empire—and ultimately his own expectations of himself—is more courageous than Turlo.”

A gentle breeze rattled the dry leaves, and I could hear the horses cropping grass. Casyn sipped his tea. I lay back again in the sun. “When do our roads part?” I asked.

“Two days from now. About mid-morning on the second day, we’ll come to a track that runs south-easterly, while this road swings to the west. We’ll say our farewells there. The easterly track will bring us to the winter camp more quickly than the southern. Your errand takes you south, and neither should be delayed.”xxx

I nodded. I would miss him, but part of me wanted to be alone with Garth again, to talk to him of Maya and the future, and to camp under the trees and moon. I heard voices and looked up to see the men climbing over the ridge, rabbits swinging from their hands. Garth was grinning. A light breeze blew, his hair back across his forehead as he held up his brace. “Dinner tonight,” he said. He looked relaxed, his eyes lit up with pride in this new skill.

“If we can buy some root vegetables, pot herbs, and perhaps a loaf of bread at the next inn,” I said, “I’ll stew those rabbits tonight, as a change from roasting them.” This brought appreciative noises from Turlo, but then, anything to do with food usually did. We doused and scattered the fire, re-bridled the horses and tightened the girths, and mounted, turning south again into the red-gold afternoon.

Excerpt from Reverse Migration

Beyond the village, west towards the Wash, flat fields of barley and wheat, latticed with ditches, lie on either side of the paved right-of-way out to the water. Once this was marsh, and from the satellite images on Google Earth, the patterns of waterflow can still be seen, like a ghost, or a memory, held in the soil.

Around the village, around its bungalows and houses, shops and pubs, church and hall, people going about their lives shopping, walking dogs, gardening, working, I see other ghosts, memories not my own underlying the quotidian. My father’s memories, and his parents, and beyond that for unknown years. Memories now at their newest eighty-seven years past, and going back for generations.

I would like to know this place intimately, to understand its ecology and geology, its weather, its landscape, its history. I want to watch the seasons here, the ebb and flow of waders on the Wash, feel the wind off the North Sea in the winter, bringing hard frost and snow; hear the nightjars churring on the Fen at a summer’s dusk; see the hordes of geese returning, and leaving, autumn and spring. I would like, as much as can be in a changed world, to know this place as my forebearers did, the knowledge of foot and sight and smell and feel. I have been making small beginnings, over the last thirty years, coming closer together over these last ten. What can I learn, this time, in a month in spring?

A century ago my great-grandfather built a tiny wooden bungalow, a beach cottage, on the shingle beyond the marshes. I do not know exactly where. Between Dersingham and the Wash were the marshes, and, the first part of the lane which is now the bridleway from Station Road, which is recorded on Faden’s 1797 map of Norfolk. There was (and is) also the Drift, a droveway to move sheep on and off the marshes.

What lay between the edge of the village and the Wash I imagine to have been a mix of rush and sedge and ling, cut with hundreds of channels and small ponds, rich with wildfowl, water vole and waders. Perhaps not, though; perhaps it was grazing marsh, diked and drained, wet meadow. And perhaps it was a mix of the two; I suspect this is the most likely. At some point in the 1920’s, my grandfather, Percy, and one of his brothers-in-law, Sid or Eph, walked out from the Drift to the bungalow, across the wet land and the unbridged waterways. Because this story was still being told eighty years later, I think they arrived very wet, very muddy, and to a good telling off from the women.

The land now is arable, planted to cereals for the most part, but also managed for wildlife, or at least for shooting. Weedy headlands, broad buffer strips on either side of the waterways and around each field, some fields left to grass fallow, strips and clumps of trees: all give shelter not only to the pheasant and red-legged grouse, but to other wildlife. The first morning we walked out there were hares everywhere. Marsh harriers hunted over the fields and the marshes; whitethroat, dunnock, robins, blackcaps, and reed and sedge warblers sang, along with finches, green and gold, and linnets. Songs I do not know, songs to learn, to become part of the tapestry.

A few greylag geese are raising goslings in the fields near the Wash, along with several Egyptian geese. Oystercatchers and ringed plover nest on the beach. Goldfinches twitter from the tops of the blackthorn. Cuckoos call from the woodlands. A whitethroat sings from every bush or tall reed along the ditches, it seems; some will be raising cuckoo chicks, unwittingly.

The land has changed since my father’s childhood, but two things have not: the sky and the sea. The vast Norfolk skies, the ebb and flow of the tide over Ferrier and Peter Black Sands, and the birds that belong to both: in May, oystercatchers, dunlin, knot and grey plover, feeding at the edge of the sands, moving with the tide, or taking to the skies in huge wheeling flocks, sometimes put up by a peregrine, sometimes by seemingly nothing.

So, which one?  Let me know what you think!

 

 

The Pharaoh’s Cat, by Maria Luisa Lang: A Review

Maria Luisa Lang definitely has a cat. Wrappa-Hamen, the feline narrator Pharaoh's catof The Pharaoh’s Cat, can only have been written by someone who lives with, or has lived with, at least one cat.

Through the fulfillment of a goddess’s decree from centuries before, Wrappa-Hamen gains the ability to talk, and to walk on his hind legs like a human. He becomes the companion of a lonely and sad young Pharaoh in ancient Egypt, accompanying him on his travels, sharing his meals, and sleeping on his bed. The evil Vizier, who has overseen the upbringing of the young Pharaoh, hates cats; the High Priest does not.

The Pharaoh’s Cat is a light-hearted adventure, set primarily in ancient Egypt, and an accurate if superficial portrayal of Egyptian mythology. Superficial is not a criticism here; any deeper discussion or description would have been inappropriate. Lang has a gift for writing amusing vignettes of life, and the first half of the book primarily consists of these vignettes, the plot moving along somewhat slowly. Suddenly the pace changes, and elements are introduced that are unexpected.

Lang’s writing is competent and flows well, keeping the same light tone throughout the book. Dialogue is realistic (assuming you can accept a talking cat, that is) but not complex, which is also true of the characters. They remain slightly two-dimensional, with Wrappa-Hamen showing the most development over the course of the story. The plot requires a fair bit of suspension of disbelief; it is a world where gods have real power and presence, and incantations, done properly, work, but this is not high fantasy that takes itself seriously. It’s fun.

Overall I am rating the book 3.5/5 (see how I review and rate books here) and would recommend it to any fantasy fan who enjoys a light-hearted, quick read. There’s a sequel coming out; I will be looking for it.

The author provided me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.  The opinions expressed here are mine alone.