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rhyskeir's review
5.0
I'm having a hard time summarizing this book, and I don't know why. It was a really good book, I enjoyed it immensely.
So we got our main hero, Teyr. She is a merchant of some sort, a former soldier, who has a dream: to build a road in a clan-filled land. This road would help the clans greatly. Trading and travelling would be easier, and of course, it could give stability to the land.
But of course nothing is as easy as it seems. There is a warlord in the land, who is terrorizing everyone, and he doesn't want to do anything with this road. And perhaps there are some things that happen in the book which makes him really angry at Teyr.
Anyway, this is what an action packed novel is about. Something is always happening. There's fights, there's deaths - oh but how many... -, and there are twists you can't be prepared for. So I would say this book is not for the faint hearted.
Teyr is in fact a badass character. Her fighting is clever, she is strong, she is angry, but most importantly she is human. And for humans, she can fu*k up everything, and this I loved about this book. While the novel sticks to some tropes, but because of Teyr, you can never be sure of what will happen. You shouldn't as well.
The focus is on the 'magic system'. As far as I can say, magic is nothing but different brews, potions as anybody would say. You patch up some herbs, plants, you mix them up, and bam, you got different kinds of potions. You have fightbrews, which make you stronger, faster; you have healing brews; you have some stuff that makes you see better at night - this whole system reminded me of videogames, where you ease your fight with whatever you can.
Only Selby could have explained them better. I mean there's this mist hanging over the book, which makes the whole story feels like some old myth, and I guess it could have been his idea from the beginning, but it feels a little off.
Not that the world itself wouldn't be interesting. It's fascinating, it's fantastic! Though I do love the idea of clans and barbarians, so this world appealed to me. And there are the Oskoro, whom I have no idea who or what they are really - and because Selby doesn't really explain them to us, it's the better. I imagined them as humans who meddled with plants and magic for far too deep, and live as a symbiosis. I imagine they look like half plants and half humans?
And this is not the only question I have. This book surprisingly had some deep thoughts - like for instanse what should you do with your life; what is happiness; what does family means to you; what does death mean to you; how do you cope with death. Surprisingly, because who knew that a 'simple' fantasy novel could have these topics embedded within itself? It made me thinking for days, and I cannot emphasize how great an experience is that!
So this is a great book. I can't really say anything bad for it, becaused I loved it. I understand this is not a series, but Selby's other books, Snakewood and the upcoming Brother Red are taking place in the same universe, in the same land as this. So I have to move up these books in my TBR, because I have to know what will happen in these lands, and if they are half as good as this was, than I'm up for a treat!
So we got our main hero, Teyr. She is a merchant of some sort, a former soldier, who has a dream: to build a road in a clan-filled land. This road would help the clans greatly. Trading and travelling would be easier, and of course, it could give stability to the land.
But of course nothing is as easy as it seems. There is a warlord in the land, who is terrorizing everyone, and he doesn't want to do anything with this road. And perhaps there are some things that happen in the book which makes him really angry at Teyr.
Anyway, this is what an action packed novel is about. Something is always happening. There's fights, there's deaths - oh but how many... -, and there are twists you can't be prepared for. So I would say this book is not for the faint hearted.
Teyr is in fact a badass character. Her fighting is clever, she is strong, she is angry, but most importantly she is human. And for humans, she can fu*k up everything, and this I loved about this book. While the novel sticks to some tropes, but because of Teyr, you can never be sure of what will happen. You shouldn't as well.
The focus is on the 'magic system'. As far as I can say, magic is nothing but different brews, potions as anybody would say. You patch up some herbs, plants, you mix them up, and bam, you got different kinds of potions. You have fightbrews, which make you stronger, faster; you have healing brews; you have some stuff that makes you see better at night - this whole system reminded me of videogames, where you ease your fight with whatever you can.
Only Selby could have explained them better. I mean there's this mist hanging over the book, which makes the whole story feels like some old myth, and I guess it could have been his idea from the beginning, but it feels a little off.
Not that the world itself wouldn't be interesting. It's fascinating, it's fantastic! Though I do love the idea of clans and barbarians, so this world appealed to me. And there are the Oskoro, whom I have no idea who or what they are really - and because Selby doesn't really explain them to us, it's the better. I imagined them as humans who meddled with plants and magic for far too deep, and live as a symbiosis. I imagine they look like half plants and half humans?
And this is not the only question I have. This book surprisingly had some deep thoughts - like for instanse what should you do with your life; what is happiness; what does family means to you; what does death mean to you; how do you cope with death. Surprisingly, because who knew that a 'simple' fantasy novel could have these topics embedded within itself? It made me thinking for days, and I cannot emphasize how great an experience is that!
So this is a great book. I can't really say anything bad for it, becaused I loved it. I understand this is not a series, but Selby's other books, Snakewood and the upcoming Brother Red are taking place in the same universe, in the same land as this. So I have to move up these books in my TBR, because I have to know what will happen in these lands, and if they are half as good as this was, than I'm up for a treat!
rapidyoda's review
5.0
Brilliant book
Brilliant, well thought out lovable characters and a storyline that keeps you hankering for more throughout. One of the best books of this year. Buy it and read.
Brilliant, well thought out lovable characters and a storyline that keeps you hankering for more throughout. One of the best books of this year. Buy it and read.
thewashouts's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
gay's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Violence
Moderate: Sexual assault
touriya's review
5.0
Fantastic! This has now won the title of being my all time favorite standalone fantasy! I felt it from the beginning even though I did find the language to be a little challenging for me at first, but I got into it and it just added to the charm and the setting. My emotions was all over the place and my man kept nagging me to finish it so he could find some peace and quiet again... Teyr is the best character I ever read about. The battle scenes had me on edge at all times. Sometimes it was breathtaking and sometimes it was underwhelming, but that just adds to the beauty of it. I think Adrian Selby has great potential of becoming my favorite author. But I must say I wanted to strangle the man at some points for tormenting my soul and giving me nightmares. He is a great writer who can put so many sensations and such a heavy impact into just a few words. Seriously though, read it.
grmatthews's review
5.0
There is such a clear sense of character that by the time you get to the letters (no spoilers) at the end, you are dragged, never wanting it to be over, through a bitter-sweet, heart-aching ending that you'll be left with a book hangover.
The world is clearly built; plants and recipes, governments and politics.
The action is fierce and unforgiving; characters die... lots of them and not all deaths, as it should be, are noble but each chips a little more away from your soul.
If you've read Snakewood you'll get a lot from this se/prequel - if you haven't read Snakewood, it doesn't matter, jump in and enjoy (knowing you going to be put through the wringer as you do).
The world is clearly built; plants and recipes, governments and politics.
The action is fierce and unforgiving; characters die... lots of them and not all deaths, as it should be, are noble but each chips a little more away from your soul.
If you've read Snakewood you'll get a lot from this se/prequel - if you haven't read Snakewood, it doesn't matter, jump in and enjoy (knowing you going to be put through the wringer as you do).
jasonoffer's review
4.0
This is such a difficult book to review. It's hard to grasp the world at times and I often found the writing confusing, I found it hard to like and enjoy yet it was completely absorbing. Reminds me of K J Parker's books being very dry, dark and abrupt with little humor, you don't necessarily like the book as it's a hard dark world, but cannot put it down. The ending did not leave me elated, excited or yearning for more, just empty.
Would I recommend it? Yes definitely.
Would I recommend it? Yes definitely.
thefussyreader's review
4.0
3.75☆ ... I think?
This is difficult book to get into, but I would urge you to keep going, because it does get easier. Not to say that the writing style changes, you simply get used to it.
I read 27 pages before realising I didn't know what the fuck was going on. The next day I started again from the beginning, because I was determined to enjoy and understand this book. And I feel pretty confident I managed both of those things.
Characters
Like the writing style itself, the charcters are difficult to like at first.
The strange writing style made the them difficult to relate to, or even understand initially, but once the plot got going and I understood Teyr's motivations, she was a very likeable character in the end.
It was quite refreshing to see a female in the role of brutal, badass mercenary for a change, especially as she had a 'house husband' who was her opposite in that regard. A flipping of gender roles like this isn't something I see that often in fantasy, much less grimdark, so it made for a surprisingly unquie read for me.
And the female badassery doesn't stop with Teyr. Oh, no, she's no mere lip-service to feminism, there were multiple brutal female mercenaries in her group, which did wonders for the world-building, establishing an alternative look at gender normative within this world.
Teyr remained a nuanced character throughout and I think as a reader or a writer, that's all you can ask for.
Plot
A standalone fantasy novel. There's a collect of words you don't see often. It was quite refreshing to pick this up, knowing I wasn't about to get invested in a three, five, or ten books series. There's a certain feeling of freedom to that.
As for the plot itself, this is a revenge arc, and a satisfying one too, I might add.
Told in two parts, I found the jumping between Then and Now a little tricky to navigate at first, only because I kept forgetting whether I was in Then or Now. I'd have to keep flipping back to the chapter start and checking. A few chapters in though, I got into the swing of things and found it easy enough to follow.
It seems a strange style of storytelling. Half the book does the previously mentioned Then and Now thing. When the stroy fully catches up to Now, the narrative stays within the Now. Which is understandable. But then the story reaches its conclusion, and the remaining portion of the book is told through the format of letters back and forth between Teyr and Aude.
Though the letters were indeed interesting, and I glad they were included, but it felt a little odd. Like they were something g wholly separate to the story I'd just read. I felt like so much of Teyr and Aude's lives were brushed over, and I would've been equally as satisfied if the story ended when the main story arc wrapped itself up.
So in conclusion, I liked, but also why?
I will say though, that the pacing of this plot is fantastic. There's never a slow moment. Everything that happens pushes the plot forward.
Setting
I must admit, this book has some very intelligent world-building going on. There are zero info-dumps. No exposition. Nothing is explained. We're like babies thrown into the deep end. Our natural instinct is to simply float until someone saves us, but no one saves us in this book, we just continue to float through the world until we've been in the water long enough to suddenly realise we can swim.
The author creates his world through language. Not word choice, but language. As in made up words.
Again, this was a little tricky to navigate at first, but after you've been in the world a good long while, the strange slang starts sounding normal.
I even had a A Clockwork Orange moment when I first started, where I had to put the book down and consider whether I was actually going to understand any of it. But reading this book gave me similar moments of marvel. The brain it fantastic, how quickly it can recognise made-up words and give them meaning based purely on the context in which they're used. This book, if nothing else, makes a fine study on how easily language can be interpreted if one immerses themselves enough.
The world itself feels incredibly bleak and dangerous. It's the epitome of a grimdark novel, and I really appreciate how brutal the author got with his characters. Like, these guys suffered. I'm not just speaking about the deaths either, but the extend of character injures felt like a shock to my reader system. So often I expect characters to slip through battles unscathed, but this author went there, and he wasn't afraid to keep going there.
Writing Style
So as I brushed upon above, this writing style......it's a choice, that's for sure.
I don't think I could read endless books written this way, but finding a book like this every so often is, I feel, a genuinely beneficial read.
It shows me that even if the writing is a challenge and not what might he considered 'normal writing', my brain will adjust to this new idea of 'normal'.
Without getting too deep here, I just find the brain, and how it interprets language, to be fascinating.
That being said, this writing is definitely a challenge. If you can read and accept deliberate grammatical errors, then you'll be fine. At the start it may feel like the dodgey tense uses are a mistake, but you soon realise it's intentional, and somehow you have to find a way to not be bothered by them.
And although the chapters were split into Then and Now, I could never figure out what the actual tense of the book was. It regularly shifted between past and present within chapters and I found it a little bit jarring.
Final Impression
Kind of a strange book, but I enjoyed the story and characters. A cleverly written book that expertly shows how language is the greatest world-building tool in any writers arsenal.
This is difficult book to get into, but I would urge you to keep going, because it does get easier. Not to say that the writing style changes, you simply get used to it.
I read 27 pages before realising I didn't know what the fuck was going on. The next day I started again from the beginning, because I was determined to enjoy and understand this book. And I feel pretty confident I managed both of those things.
Characters
Like the writing style itself, the charcters are difficult to like at first.
The strange writing style made the them difficult to relate to, or even understand initially, but once the plot got going and I understood Teyr's motivations, she was a very likeable character in the end.
It was quite refreshing to see a female in the role of brutal, badass mercenary for a change, especially as she had a 'house husband' who was her opposite in that regard. A flipping of gender roles like this isn't something I see that often in fantasy, much less grimdark, so it made for a surprisingly unquie read for me.
And the female badassery doesn't stop with Teyr. Oh, no, she's no mere lip-service to feminism, there were multiple brutal female mercenaries in her group, which did wonders for the world-building, establishing an alternative look at gender normative within this world.
Teyr remained a nuanced character throughout and I think as a reader or a writer, that's all you can ask for.
Plot
A standalone fantasy novel. There's a collect of words you don't see often. It was quite refreshing to pick this up, knowing I wasn't about to get invested in a three, five, or ten books series. There's a certain feeling of freedom to that.
As for the plot itself, this is a revenge arc, and a satisfying one too, I might add.
Told in two parts, I found the jumping between Then and Now a little tricky to navigate at first, only because I kept forgetting whether I was in Then or Now. I'd have to keep flipping back to the chapter start and checking. A few chapters in though, I got into the swing of things and found it easy enough to follow.
It seems a strange style of storytelling. Half the book does the previously mentioned Then and Now thing. When the stroy fully catches up to Now, the narrative stays within the Now. Which is understandable. But then the story reaches its conclusion, and the remaining portion of the book is told through the format of letters back and forth between Teyr and Aude.
Though the letters were indeed interesting, and I glad they were included, but it felt a little odd. Like they were something g wholly separate to the story I'd just read. I felt like so much of Teyr and Aude's lives were brushed over, and I would've been equally as satisfied if the story ended when the main story arc wrapped itself up.
So in conclusion, I liked, but also why?
I will say though, that the pacing of this plot is fantastic. There's never a slow moment. Everything that happens pushes the plot forward.
Setting
I must admit, this book has some very intelligent world-building going on. There are zero info-dumps. No exposition. Nothing is explained. We're like babies thrown into the deep end. Our natural instinct is to simply float until someone saves us, but no one saves us in this book, we just continue to float through the world until we've been in the water long enough to suddenly realise we can swim.
The author creates his world through language. Not word choice, but language. As in made up words.
Again, this was a little tricky to navigate at first, but after you've been in the world a good long while, the strange slang starts sounding normal.
I even had a A Clockwork Orange moment when I first started, where I had to put the book down and consider whether I was actually going to understand any of it. But reading this book gave me similar moments of marvel. The brain it fantastic, how quickly it can recognise made-up words and give them meaning based purely on the context in which they're used. This book, if nothing else, makes a fine study on how easily language can be interpreted if one immerses themselves enough.
The world itself feels incredibly bleak and dangerous. It's the epitome of a grimdark novel, and I really appreciate how brutal the author got with his characters. Like, these guys suffered. I'm not just speaking about the deaths either, but the extend of character injures felt like a shock to my reader system. So often I expect characters to slip through battles unscathed, but this author went there, and he wasn't afraid to keep going there.
Writing Style
So as I brushed upon above, this writing style......it's a choice, that's for sure.
I don't think I could read endless books written this way, but finding a book like this every so often is, I feel, a genuinely beneficial read.
It shows me that even if the writing is a challenge and not what might he considered 'normal writing', my brain will adjust to this new idea of 'normal'.
Without getting too deep here, I just find the brain, and how it interprets language, to be fascinating.
That being said, this writing is definitely a challenge. If you can read and accept deliberate grammatical errors, then you'll be fine. At the start it may feel like the dodgey tense uses are a mistake, but you soon realise it's intentional, and somehow you have to find a way to not be bothered by them.
And although the chapters were split into Then and Now, I could never figure out what the actual tense of the book was. It regularly shifted between past and present within chapters and I found it a little bit jarring.
Final Impression
Kind of a strange book, but I enjoyed the story and characters. A cleverly written book that expertly shows how language is the greatest world-building tool in any writers arsenal.