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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
before anything i apologise for my grammar, as english is not my first language.
i was going to rate this book 3.5/4.0 until i reached the end. and that is because it just frustrated me so much, i was splitting hair, but now i guess this must be on purpose (and its genius!) because at the end i realised how much of my feelings were heden's feelings all along. thinking about this last chapter still gets my throat all tight.
this is a heavy and slow book, but it is at the same time quite refreshing for the fantasy genre in my opinion. i enjoyed the humor when it was there. i think heden was an excelent character and i loved how we only get hints of his past with no over exposition, it left me wanting to know more about him. i also liked his relationship with vanora, as i love found family storylines.
the fighting scenes were pretty epic, and we can clearly see the tabletop influence on those, which i don't consider a down side at all - i enjoyed them a lot.
i like the worldbuilding, especially because matt doesn't just throw a buch of information on me and expects me to keep track of it - it is done much like heden's backstory: in small pieces, people comment on what they should comment and dont waste time explaining things that would be obvious or usual for them the same way i wouldnt explain someone exactly what a cat is, which made the world feel very authentic and alive in my opinion.
i looking very much foward to reading thief, and i can say that priest is now one of my favorite fantasy stories and i will come back to it quite often.
i was going to rate this book 3.5/4.0 until i reached the end. and that is because it just frustrated me so much, i was splitting hair, but now i guess this must be on purpose (and its genius!) because at the end i realised how much of my feelings were heden's feelings all along. thinking about this last chapter still gets my throat all tight.
this is a heavy and slow book, but it is at the same time quite refreshing for the fantasy genre in my opinion. i enjoyed the humor when it was there. i think heden was an excelent character and i loved how we only get hints of his past with no over exposition, it left me wanting to know more about him. i also liked his relationship with vanora, as i love found family storylines.
the fighting scenes were pretty epic, and we can clearly see the tabletop influence on those, which i don't consider a down side at all - i enjoyed them a lot.
i like the worldbuilding, especially because matt doesn't just throw a buch of information on me and expects me to keep track of it - it is done much like heden's backstory: in small pieces, people comment on what they should comment and dont waste time explaining things that would be obvious or usual for them the same way i wouldnt explain someone exactly what a cat is, which made the world feel very authentic and alive in my opinion.
i looking very much foward to reading thief, and i can say that priest is now one of my favorite fantasy stories and i will come back to it quite often.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is a helluva book. It's the sort of book I'm always looking for, but don't quite realise it until I'm reading it. The back-cover blurb can't really do justice to what it's about, and even having read the reviews from SPFBO (where it was a finalist) I didn't quite grasp it. I haven't read the rest of the books it was up against, but I can only assume it didn't win for similar reasons to [b:Senlin Ascends|17554595|Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel, #1)|Josiah Bancroft|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1362535545s/17554595.jpg|24467682] - it's a hugely ambitious and very different book to your normal fare (especially in self-pub).
Sure, it's got all the trappings of generic fantasy - knights, orcs, elves, dwarves, even a hobbit-alike - but that's not what it's about. Yes, the plot has a few dead-ends - or at least, seems to - but in the end you realise it's not really about the events. This is a very personal story, all about characters, and the central mystery is just as much about the protagonist as the knights.
I thought it'd be a fantasy noir - [b:Red Harvest|30005|Red Harvest|Dashiell Hammett|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320423692s/30005.jpg|2193257] meets Excalibur - but the protagonist is not the faceless, remorseless Op, he's a vet with PTSD, a man sent on a mission impossible for both personal and political reasons. It's Excalibur meets Apocalypse Now, with echoes of [a:Gene Wolfe|23069|Gene Wolfe|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1207670073p2/23069.jpg], [a:Jack Vance|5376|Jack Vance|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1207604643p2/5376.jpg], [a:Katharine Kerr|44003|Katharine Kerr|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1418184371p2/44003.jpg] (ok, not necessarily in terms of prose, though it does have some of the best character conversations I've ever read).
If you want to read it as an adventure with action and knights and monsters, that probably works, too. But it's much more than that, to me, at least.
Sure, it's got all the trappings of generic fantasy - knights, orcs, elves, dwarves, even a hobbit-alike - but that's not what it's about. Yes, the plot has a few dead-ends - or at least, seems to - but in the end you realise it's not really about the events. This is a very personal story, all about characters, and the central mystery is just as much about the protagonist as the knights.
I thought it'd be a fantasy noir - [b:Red Harvest|30005|Red Harvest|Dashiell Hammett|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320423692s/30005.jpg|2193257] meets Excalibur - but the protagonist is not the faceless, remorseless Op, he's a vet with PTSD, a man sent on a mission impossible for both personal and political reasons. It's Excalibur meets Apocalypse Now, with echoes of [a:Gene Wolfe|23069|Gene Wolfe|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1207670073p2/23069.jpg], [a:Jack Vance|5376|Jack Vance|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1207604643p2/5376.jpg], [a:Katharine Kerr|44003|Katharine Kerr|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1418184371p2/44003.jpg] (ok, not necessarily in terms of prose, though it does have some of the best character conversations I've ever read).
If you want to read it as an adventure with action and knights and monsters, that probably works, too. But it's much more than that, to me, at least.
There’s a certain amount of truth in the stereotypes about self-published fiction. It’s less likely to be as well-edited as traditionally published work. There a lot of bad stuff out there that you have to slog through to find the good stuff. But the good stuff is worth reading when you find it.
This, my friends, is the good stuff.
Heden’s a man with a mysterious and undiscussed past, and man who owns an inn that never opens, who does favours for the church and clearly has a history with them but who seems to see religious dealings in more of a practical light than a spiritual one. He’s a man who knows that the expedient thing isn’t always the thing that saves you the most trouble in the end, a man who baffles people around him by his mix of action and inaction. A man who is chosen by the church of Cavall to investigate the Green Order, and why this reclusive group of knights who have lived in isolation for centuries are dying out, and what that means for the church and for Heden himself.
There’s a high degree of cynicism that goes along with this story, shown primarily in Heden’s dealings with the Green Knights themselves. The Order holds true to knightly ideals, for good and for ill, which is bound to be frustrating when an outsider comes in and starts demanding that people explain themselves when they’ve vowed to keep silent about the deal of their Knight Commander. For all that none of them are comfortable with what happened, and know that Heden is there to judge and to bring justice if he can, they stick to their code and refuse to reveal the truth, a conflict of interest that makes Heden seem to want to beat his head off walls at times. At what point does being loyal to an ideal absolve you of betraying someone who holds to that same ideal? The reader’s frustrations mirror Heden’s as he and the Knights talk circles and get nowhere for much of the book.
Which admittedly was not the most fun to read, and I think a few conversations would have been better cut or at least condensed. Conversations about nothing tended to drag on for pages, and while it certainly gave me a good feel for what Heden was going through, it slowed the story down. And considering Heden’s on a bit of a time limit to solve the Green Order’s problems (without absolution, the Knights can’t leave in defense of a soon-to-be-attacked town, and without truth, Heden can’t give absolution), slowing down the story to focus on circular conversations may not have been the best move.
One thing I really loved about Priest is the way I just fell into the world, a comfortably familiar fantasy setting while still showing signs of personal tweaking by the author. While the book largely focuses on human characters, there are plenty of non-human races mentioned all over the place. Urq, who are not just orcs with a weirdly spelled name but instead seem to resemble trolls from the Elder Scrolls games, aggressive and bred for battle and hatred of other races. Brocc, a sort of anthropomorphic badger people. Polder, which I kept picturing as a cross between a gnome and a hobbit. Little tweaks all over to make the world feel original, fleshed-out and full, while still being a very clear traditional Western-based fantasy.
The biggest drawback this book had, aside from the frustrating circular conversations and the way every piece of information practically had to be squeezed out of characters, was the modes of speech. Now, I like the way the Knights had their cant, talking with “thee”s and “thou”s because that’s how they believe knights should speak. I thought that was a nice touch. But it’s always a bit strange to hear characters say, “Okay,” when you’re dealing with secondary-world fantasy. And people said that a lot in Priest, jarring me out of the reading groove whenever it happened.
I can rationalize this to an extent by my usual belief that characters in secondary-world fantasy are not speaking English, so their words on the page are, essentially, a translation for the reader’s sake. And so I can stretch that a little further to say that when characters said, “okay,” it was in place of a similar slang term in the affirmative, one that’s used as commonly there as “okay” is here. But it still felt out of place, a modern interloper.
But really, those are minor nitpicks when you compare them to the way I just fell into this story and didn’t want to leave it. This is the sort of novel people ought to pay more attention to in the self-published piles. It’s not perfect, but it’s a cut above most of the rest, and it’s a great example of the treasures that can be hiding behind other offerings. I enjoyed Priest from the first page, the tone of the writing and the way the characters came to life so quickly, and I have to say that this one leaves my hands quite well-recommended.
(Received for review as part of the SPFBO.)
This, my friends, is the good stuff.
Heden’s a man with a mysterious and undiscussed past, and man who owns an inn that never opens, who does favours for the church and clearly has a history with them but who seems to see religious dealings in more of a practical light than a spiritual one. He’s a man who knows that the expedient thing isn’t always the thing that saves you the most trouble in the end, a man who baffles people around him by his mix of action and inaction. A man who is chosen by the church of Cavall to investigate the Green Order, and why this reclusive group of knights who have lived in isolation for centuries are dying out, and what that means for the church and for Heden himself.
There’s a high degree of cynicism that goes along with this story, shown primarily in Heden’s dealings with the Green Knights themselves. The Order holds true to knightly ideals, for good and for ill, which is bound to be frustrating when an outsider comes in and starts demanding that people explain themselves when they’ve vowed to keep silent about the deal of their Knight Commander. For all that none of them are comfortable with what happened, and know that Heden is there to judge and to bring justice if he can, they stick to their code and refuse to reveal the truth, a conflict of interest that makes Heden seem to want to beat his head off walls at times. At what point does being loyal to an ideal absolve you of betraying someone who holds to that same ideal? The reader’s frustrations mirror Heden’s as he and the Knights talk circles and get nowhere for much of the book.
Which admittedly was not the most fun to read, and I think a few conversations would have been better cut or at least condensed. Conversations about nothing tended to drag on for pages, and while it certainly gave me a good feel for what Heden was going through, it slowed the story down. And considering Heden’s on a bit of a time limit to solve the Green Order’s problems (without absolution, the Knights can’t leave in defense of a soon-to-be-attacked town, and without truth, Heden can’t give absolution), slowing down the story to focus on circular conversations may not have been the best move.
One thing I really loved about Priest is the way I just fell into the world, a comfortably familiar fantasy setting while still showing signs of personal tweaking by the author. While the book largely focuses on human characters, there are plenty of non-human races mentioned all over the place. Urq, who are not just orcs with a weirdly spelled name but instead seem to resemble trolls from the Elder Scrolls games, aggressive and bred for battle and hatred of other races. Brocc, a sort of anthropomorphic badger people. Polder, which I kept picturing as a cross between a gnome and a hobbit. Little tweaks all over to make the world feel original, fleshed-out and full, while still being a very clear traditional Western-based fantasy.
The biggest drawback this book had, aside from the frustrating circular conversations and the way every piece of information practically had to be squeezed out of characters, was the modes of speech. Now, I like the way the Knights had their cant, talking with “thee”s and “thou”s because that’s how they believe knights should speak. I thought that was a nice touch. But it’s always a bit strange to hear characters say, “Okay,” when you’re dealing with secondary-world fantasy. And people said that a lot in Priest, jarring me out of the reading groove whenever it happened.
I can rationalize this to an extent by my usual belief that characters in secondary-world fantasy are not speaking English, so their words on the page are, essentially, a translation for the reader’s sake. And so I can stretch that a little further to say that when characters said, “okay,” it was in place of a similar slang term in the affirmative, one that’s used as commonly there as “okay” is here. But it still felt out of place, a modern interloper.
But really, those are minor nitpicks when you compare them to the way I just fell into this story and didn’t want to leave it. This is the sort of novel people ought to pay more attention to in the self-published piles. It’s not perfect, but it’s a cut above most of the rest, and it’s a great example of the treasures that can be hiding behind other offerings. I enjoyed Priest from the first page, the tone of the writing and the way the characters came to life so quickly, and I have to say that this one leaves my hands quite well-recommended.
(Received for review as part of the SPFBO.)
What a fun and fascinating fantasy novel! Written by D&D expert Matthew Colville, this book is definitely worth reading for it's RPG plot ideas if for nothing else. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and was glad that I read it. It was fun and there were certainly plot twists that I didn't anticipate.
However, I did have a couple problems.
To begin with, some of the writing is a little clunky. Good writing, but some passages were clunky or wouldn't include enough information to make it entirely clear what was going on. The opposite also happened - some passages were far too straightforward about character emotions or perceptions and I wished there was a little more ambiguity. Or at least show me instead of telling me straight out.
My second problem is that this felt like a D&D campaign. A lot of RPG playing is based off of fantasy novels, but this felt like a novel based on a D&D campaign. When the main character spent several chapters unsuccessfully trying to get information from a group of people, it got a little old. As a role-player, this could have been really fun to talk to each new person and get the same response. As a reader, it got boring really fast. This would be a fantastic campaign (and it gave me tons of ideas), but some of it should have been altered slightly for a book.
Overall, this is a fantasy book that is worth the read and I'm excited to read the next one!
However, I did have a couple problems.
To begin with, some of the writing is a little clunky. Good writing, but some passages were clunky or wouldn't include enough information to make it entirely clear what was going on. The opposite also happened - some passages were far too straightforward about character emotions or perceptions and I wished there was a little more ambiguity. Or at least show me instead of telling me straight out.
My second problem is that this felt like a D&D campaign. A lot of RPG playing is based off of fantasy novels, but this felt like a novel based on a D&D campaign. When the main character spent several chapters unsuccessfully trying to get information from a group of people, it got a little old. As a role-player, this could have been really fun to talk to each new person and get the same response. As a reader, it got boring really fast. This would be a fantastic campaign (and it gave me tons of ideas), but some of it should have been altered slightly for a book.
Overall, this is a fantasy book that is worth the read and I'm excited to read the next one!