There is just too much of this book to summarise –
Ashrinn, an ex-special forces soldier returns, injured from Iraq and discovers
a whole new magical world, powers he never imagined, his own personal connection
to the divine and, above all, a purpose. A purpose to save not just his home,
not even just the magical community – but the entire world. And in the process
find his own personal family life shook to the core.
That is such a brief and pared down summary of the vastness
that happens in this book
This book has some of the best characters you could hope
to meet; even side characters have a sense of history and personality just
waiting to be discovered. Even side characters banter off each other well. It
has an amazing level of diversity with GBLT people, POC and disabled people.
Each of these characters has the foundation of some truly excellent development
to them. Their interactions promise lots of real connection and development.
The world is rich with many layers and powers and I long
to delve into it an examine every corner. We have different organisations, a
myriad of powers and forces for me to explore and discover.
The protagonist is someone I can really get behind, with
poignant experiences, considerable competences and a lot of personal growth and
revelations
The story promises to be exciting and action packed, with
close emotional dramas, epic conflicts and world balancing feats that is
interspaced by personal revelation and discovery
This book has every element of being awesome. This book
has all the ingredients of being one of the best books I ever read. This book
not only has every sign of being a 5 star book – but it has every sign of being
one of those books I can’t stop reading, a series I follow with an almost
fanatical religious devotion and adore to a level that is frankly creepy in its
excessiveness.
I cannot understate the incredible core of this book. I
cannot understate how utterly and unbelievably amazing this book could have
been.
Could have been.
So much potential – but it was badly let down by the execution.
It’s very overwritten. There were huge sections of the
book I was tempted to skim because they were overly descriptive, they gave
background or side information that wasn’t useful, snippets of world insight
that add too nothing and endless, endless pages of internal monologue that is
repetitive and often goes nowhere except to reconfirm the same issues we have
already seen over and over. I know Ashrinn’s issues, Liu’s issues, Mal’s issues
– but we rejoin their headspace for long long chapters of little happening but
following their thoughts as they cycle round the same issues again.
I think there’s a real attempt to truly establish these
characters and the theme and atmosphere, but it loses me in a lot of really
heavy text I could skip over.
Worse than being overwritten, this book felt like several
books squished together:
Book 1: Ashrinn has his awakening moment, comes home and
is introduced to the supernatural by Randolph, training in what that means,
what he can do, what is out there and what Randolph wants to achieve with the
Order
Book 2: Ashrinn, member of the Order starts to get things
into shape, organising the order, fitting into his new life, some relationship
issues with family and friends.
Book 3: Opening up to non-paladins/mages. Establishing
and training Storm, getting the unit to work together, dealing with any issues
between members and making them an effective, elite team.
Book 4: Battling the Cult, escalation, fighting the cult,
cult avatar sets up, beginning of the war
Book 5: All out war, world in chaos, humanity learns
about magical things – panic, death, government breaks down, human-only zones,
anti-magic backlash
If this had been the series, it would have been EPIC! But
all of this happened in ONE BOOK. And on top of that we have pages of Ashrinn’s
relationship with his wife, his son and lots and lots about Mal and his kids
and the issues between Ashrinn and Mal himself that is just kind of pasted on
the rapidly speeding story for more distraction and confusion. Many times I
skimmed back in the book because I’d blinked and something had changed. Ashrinn
meets with Randolph – BLINK, he’s now training a team. How did we get from A to
B? Now the cults’ a major threat and the Order isn’t enough – how? Why? What? I
don’t know – we just blinked through all the exposition. Then BLINK! He has a
team and there’s a werewolf and he may have to kill her BLINK she’s a fully
functional member of the team and BLINK the team needs to be trained to fight!
BLINK team is trained now – wait, what, you developed the team into a fighting
force in the down time?! But… BLINK zomg DRAGON! Wait DRAGON?! Where did the
dragon come from? Why? BLINK, all out war, we’re losing pieces of Seattle!
Wait, Seattle’s under attack? The whole country’s under attack? When did this
happen?!
This continues throughout the book. There’s no
progression, no leading from scene to scene, just snap shots from different
stages in the narrative. It’s like we skip forward months of even years with
each turning of a page, vast events and knowledge happens in those missing
months and we learn nothing about it. I was constantly running to catch up,
completely lost and frustrated by the awesome elements of the story that I
never get to see!
Because it’s all crammed in there’s no time to develop
any of these plot lines. I don’t know what magic, the realms, constructs etc
means. Everyone runs around talking about shadowmancers but I only have the
vaguest idea what they do – and one of the Storm team is a shadowmancer!
There’s a member of the Storm team whose abilities I don’t really know or
understand. There are elements of the world, the Order, the astral realm, the
mage school which are mentioned repeatedly but I don’t understand. I don’t even
know what being a Paladin MEANS or what they can do beyond having a shiny sword
and throwing holy hand grenades. Ashrinn has a snake – which originally he was
scared of then positively deals with and seems to be on his side. There’s just
so much here that is not developed
We also end up with a huge cast of characters that are
nothing but names and little else; there’s so little character development –
who I often have to stop and think and even back track to figure out who they
all are. I know nothing about Randolph. People keep mentioning Natalie and it’s
only through a book search I remembered the Paladin with the birds. Rosi keeps
being mentioned but it was only after a moment’s thought I realised she was one
of Mal’s kids and not really relevant to the story. Then there were the gnomes
who maybe were connected to the school? Or the hospital? I don’t know – too
many names, not enough characterisation behind the names. I barely could keep
straight all the members of Storm and that’s a crying shame because that team
looked like it would have been immense fun to follow around
Even main characters – like Ashrinn himself – get little development. It wasn’t until half way through the book that we learn Ashrinn is bisexual (and it starts to go somewhere with this but we never have time to develop it because it has to move forwards!), we have no exploration of his Zoroastrianism except the odd, exclaimed “Ahura Mazda!”. Or Mal and his fae wife – what do the fae mean? Why? Or his sick daughter – it’s just there and never developed but supposed to have a huge emotional impact but it’s never really developed, again.
This also does a lot to damage the excellent diversity of
the book. Ashrinn being half-Persian and how that had affected him his history
and his experiences was beautifully alluded to – and more so than most – but
again not really fully developed. His bisexuality and pursuing that was clumsy
and truncated. His relationship with his wife was so brushed over that, between
her and Mal’s wife, we had a set of awful, abusive or near abusive wives and
mothers with no counter narrative. Jericho looked like an awesome character
with definite examination of her race as Black woman, but we never spent enough
time with her to develop it more than some comments on code switching and her
using ebonics. Sonth is an Indian and I would have loved to see more of. There
was some excellent foundation of some amazing inclusion but I wish everything
was more developed.
Ashrinn is a disabled character – both physically and
mentally after his experiences in the army, and this is an excellent portrayal.
There is a lot of detail dedicated to his mental processes, his fear, his
alcoholism, his doubts and frustration with his painful body – there are a lot
of references and it’s well done.
This actually means we have a book that is both extremely
overwritten and terribly under-developed at the same time. I was torn between
telling the book to hurry up and demanding it slow down. It almost felt like
someone had taken the long term premise of a full series, written the summary
then padded it out with a lot of emotional unnecessariness. I had to fight to
finish it and that’s just tragic continuing the potential it had. But it was a
struggle, it was a real struggle and if I hadn’t resorted to skimming the last
50 pages this would have been a DNF. And this book is 500 pages long – but I
still had to fight to force those last 50.
I’m so ANGERED by this book. The story, the characters,
the world – this book was not just a 5 star book, this book was a 5 star
series. I could easily have revelled in 6 books of 5 star awesomeness from
this. It could have been epic. It could have been incredible. It could have
been one of the cornerstones of my library! Instead all of this awesomeness was
rammed into one book, huge chunks of it cut off then it was liberally sprayed
with angst. It’s like seeing the best, juiciest, most wonderful cut of beef you
ever imagined being forced through a mincing machine and slathered in ketchup. It
turned what would have been an awesome book into something I struggled to get
through, I almost want to send the book back to the author and beg them to
create the excellence I just know can be extracted from this.
Should have been so much more!
A copy of this book was given by the author in exchange for a review
