Scan barcode
laurencerussell's review
3.0
In a sea of YA books about witches and wizards, The Harmatia Cycle covers something in Celtic lore that I appreciate much more and wish there was more of in modern fiction: fairies.
The world of the mythic forest spirits of Celtic and Gaelic mythology is a deep well, and goes well utilised in The Sons of Thestian, from eerie Corrigan to beguiling Gancanagh, and leaves me wanting much, much more.
STORY
The book starts on a fantastic high, something which urged me to buy it the second I skimmed the first few pages. Mingling danger and mystery, the threat of the night patrol sets an bloodcurdling tone which had me enamoured. Devastatingly, the book doesn't really use these shapechanging nightmare monsters again, after teasing you with them in the prologue, and the story of Harmatia drags it's feet pretty much all the way up to the end, and the night patrol remains more or less unexplored.
This is because after the prologue another book begins, which is about running into the woods and wandering around there, waiting for things to happen. This second book is only thinly connected to Harmatia and the night patrol, and makes use of an entirely different tone, leaving behind the intriguing gothic, horror aesthetic we started with to give you a much, much milder ride with bandits™. The appearance of the ghostly, sadistic corrigan represent a jarring return to where we started, but it's short lived.
The arrival in Sarrin dripped with good vibes and warmth, dragging me away from the long forgotten cold of the night patrol to read about simple joys and rare pleasures. In Sarrin, narratives of friendship, loss, belonging, love, and affirmation rule. Again, this change in tone blindsides you utterly and doesn't feel deserved, but I forgave it completely because of how wonderful these sections felt, and how rare these beautiful concepts and feelings were in a YA fantasy story.
Unfortunately the sickly sweet taste of Sarrin gets old after a hundred pages of it, and starts to poison the book's three act structure. Dramatic climaxes in Sarrin feel forced and sudden because they're so unnatural there. As the third act dips into a harvest festival chapter filled with joyous children and sugary sweets, the book starts to feel like a kind of reverse Lord of the Rings, where Frodo left his dark, horrifying home of Mordor to hang out in the lovely shire and hide from his problems until they show up all of a sudden.
The ending returns us to Harmatia, as if the plot of this city we barely remember after 400 odd pages were highly relevant all along, including its academy of Magi we barely got to know and the evil queen antagonist™ so bland I forgot her name.
CHARACTERS
The overarching plot of the book doesn't seem to be a focus of the book, and whilst I've been very critical of it, I took a lot of enjoyment in immersing myself in the characters as they wandered, as blissfully unaware of the plot as the reader is. Rufus and Jionathan are charming, and their intriguing romp is enchanting, especially in Sarrin.
Although I am perturbed by the friendship these two share. Jionatan and Rufus are best friends, but we're never told why. We're just told they are, then they affectionately insult one another or yell at each other, then one of them scrapes their knee and the other one almost goes into cardiac arrest with worry.
It's this big love/hate relationship, but all the love is implied, or you're led to believe it was established off the page. From the opening chapters when they're risking their lives for one another to the very end this dynamic is saturated into the bones of the book, but it doesn't feel any deeper 500 pages in than it did when I began. They hate each other in jest or for a single, passionate scene, but there's this thin veneer of unexplained love underneath that reeks of YA cliche of the two boys that are extremely close. This friendship begins ringing hollower and hollower when the characters continued to dislike almost everything about the other, and they keep screwing each other over.
Fae was such a legolas archetype it hurt. I've heard people have been upset with her relationship with Jionathan, but Jionathan came off as about 14 to me, so I never took their relationship seriously at any point.
Luca was fine as a side character that tumbled into the mix half way in. I say this because she wasn't around for as long as the other three but made strong impressions while she was on the page. She was a gutsy, talented, gay gal who wasn't afraid of hard work, and nothing really grated on me as much as with the other characters.
OTHER BITS
Whilst it unfortunately isn't a strong focus of the book, magic felt quite technical and almost scientific. Creating vacuums and water whips left me wondering what else was possible with magic, but there aren't many opportunities to explore it, and it feels like another interesting theme that I was sad to see taking a back seat
This next part isn't a enormous flaw with the book, it's just a little frustration of mine. dark skinned is not a race. I've seen this book ambitiously described as diverse, when the Rosignols feel like a family that was created white, then darkened to fit a diversity quota. There's no mention of their ancestry that can be traced back to foreign lands with a rich culture that the family upholds to this day, or any mention of non European features. They collect apples, play Celtic music and dress up to look like European lords and ladies. This would be fine if there were anything about them at all that distinguished their race other than a couple of mentions that they have "dark skin". On the page this comes off as cultural erasure, as the Rosignols sometimes feel whiter than anyone else in the book. Again, this isn't a horribly racist crime, it just felt like the bare minimum for diversity, and I couldn't help but wish Sarrin were in a far off continent that Fae teleported them all to.
I'm a fan of Ms. Vaughan's and although this book wasn't quite for me, I look forward to what she does next.
The world of the mythic forest spirits of Celtic and Gaelic mythology is a deep well, and goes well utilised in The Sons of Thestian, from eerie Corrigan to beguiling Gancanagh, and leaves me wanting much, much more.
STORY
The book starts on a fantastic high, something which urged me to buy it the second I skimmed the first few pages. Mingling danger and mystery, the threat of the night patrol sets an bloodcurdling tone which had me enamoured. Devastatingly, the book doesn't really use these shapechanging nightmare monsters again, after teasing you with them in the prologue, and the story of Harmatia drags it's feet pretty much all the way up to the end, and the night patrol remains more or less unexplored.
This is because after the prologue another book begins, which is about running into the woods and wandering around there, waiting for things to happen. This second book is only thinly connected to Harmatia and the night patrol, and makes use of an entirely different tone, leaving behind the intriguing gothic, horror aesthetic we started with to give you a much, much milder ride with bandits™. The appearance of the ghostly, sadistic corrigan represent a jarring return to where we started, but it's short lived.
The arrival in Sarrin dripped with good vibes and warmth, dragging me away from the long forgotten cold of the night patrol to read about simple joys and rare pleasures. In Sarrin, narratives of friendship, loss, belonging, love, and affirmation rule. Again, this change in tone blindsides you utterly and doesn't feel deserved, but I forgave it completely because of how wonderful these sections felt, and how rare these beautiful concepts and feelings were in a YA fantasy story.
Unfortunately the sickly sweet taste of Sarrin gets old after a hundred pages of it, and starts to poison the book's three act structure. Dramatic climaxes in Sarrin feel forced and sudden because they're so unnatural there. As the third act dips into a harvest festival chapter filled with joyous children and sugary sweets, the book starts to feel like a kind of reverse Lord of the Rings, where Frodo left his dark, horrifying home of Mordor to hang out in the lovely shire and hide from his problems until they show up all of a sudden.
The ending returns us to Harmatia, as if the plot of this city we barely remember after 400 odd pages were highly relevant all along, including its academy of Magi we barely got to know and the evil queen antagonist™ so bland I forgot her name.
CHARACTERS
The overarching plot of the book doesn't seem to be a focus of the book, and whilst I've been very critical of it, I took a lot of enjoyment in immersing myself in the characters as they wandered, as blissfully unaware of the plot as the reader is. Rufus and Jionathan are charming, and their intriguing romp is enchanting, especially in Sarrin.
Although I am perturbed by the friendship these two share. Jionatan and Rufus are best friends, but we're never told why. We're just told they are, then they affectionately insult one another or yell at each other, then one of them scrapes their knee and the other one almost goes into cardiac arrest with worry.
It's this big love/hate relationship, but all the love is implied, or you're led to believe it was established off the page. From the opening chapters when they're risking their lives for one another to the very end this dynamic is saturated into the bones of the book, but it doesn't feel any deeper 500 pages in than it did when I began. They hate each other in jest or for a single, passionate scene, but there's this thin veneer of unexplained love underneath that reeks of YA cliche of the two boys that are extremely close. This friendship begins ringing hollower and hollower when the characters continued to dislike almost everything about the other, and they keep screwing each other over.
Fae was such a legolas archetype it hurt. I've heard people have been upset with her relationship with Jionathan, but Jionathan came off as about 14 to me, so I never took their relationship seriously at any point.
Luca was fine as a side character that tumbled into the mix half way in. I say this because she wasn't around for as long as the other three but made strong impressions while she was on the page. She was a gutsy, talented, gay gal who wasn't afraid of hard work, and nothing really grated on me as much as with the other characters.
OTHER BITS
Whilst it unfortunately isn't a strong focus of the book, magic felt quite technical and almost scientific. Creating vacuums and water whips left me wondering what else was possible with magic, but there aren't many opportunities to explore it, and it feels like another interesting theme that I was sad to see taking a back seat
This next part isn't a enormous flaw with the book, it's just a little frustration of mine. dark skinned is not a race. I've seen this book ambitiously described as diverse, when the Rosignols feel like a family that was created white, then darkened to fit a diversity quota. There's no mention of their ancestry that can be traced back to foreign lands with a rich culture that the family upholds to this day, or any mention of non European features. They collect apples, play Celtic music and dress up to look like European lords and ladies. This would be fine if there were anything about them at all that distinguished their race other than a couple of mentions that they have "dark skin". On the page this comes off as cultural erasure, as the Rosignols sometimes feel whiter than anyone else in the book. Again, this isn't a horribly racist crime, it just felt like the bare minimum for diversity, and I couldn't help but wish Sarrin were in a far off continent that Fae teleported them all to.
I'm a fan of Ms. Vaughan's and although this book wasn't quite for me, I look forward to what she does next.
kittyg's review
3.0
* I was sent this for free from the author in exchange for a review *
This is the first book in a new YA series of fantasy books. I sometimes have reservations about authors asking me to read their work (especially when they are nice) as I want to like it, but self-publishing can be hard and sometimes grammar issues or plot problems can ruin a great book. I am very happy to say that was not the case with this book and I did really enjoy getting to explore the world that M.E. Vaughan has created.
In this story we follow two young men: Prince Jionathan and Mage Rufus Merle. The two have known each other for nearly all their lives, and they used to be good friends before rules and obligation divided the two. When we pick up their tales it becomes clear that the young Prince is struggling with demons and worries, and he needs to escape the Palace becuase he fears for his life from his father's new wife.
Jionathan flees and Rufus follows. Once they are away from the Palace their once-friendship rekindles, and they find themselves sucked into a journey neither could have predicted. They meet fey and old kin, creepy evil people practising nefarious deeds, and even find themselves in mortal peril (quite a few times!)
I think this book felt like a great romp for a fantasy to me. It started off a bit predictably, but then the story took a turn from where I anticipated it going and things became a lot more exiting and action-packed quite quickly. I found the second half of the story completely enthralling in fact and whizzed through reading it...AND THAT ENDING...
Overall a great story and one I really had fun sinking my teeth into. It's only the start of what promises to become quite an epic series, and I am very much looking forward to seeing where the second one goes now I have read the end of the first. 3.5*s from me :)
This is the first book in a new YA series of fantasy books. I sometimes have reservations about authors asking me to read their work (especially when they are nice) as I want to like it, but self-publishing can be hard and sometimes grammar issues or plot problems can ruin a great book. I am very happy to say that was not the case with this book and I did really enjoy getting to explore the world that M.E. Vaughan has created.
In this story we follow two young men: Prince Jionathan and Mage Rufus Merle. The two have known each other for nearly all their lives, and they used to be good friends before rules and obligation divided the two. When we pick up their tales it becomes clear that the young Prince is struggling with demons and worries, and he needs to escape the Palace becuase he fears for his life from his father's new wife.
Jionathan flees and Rufus follows. Once they are away from the Palace their once-friendship rekindles, and they find themselves sucked into a journey neither could have predicted. They meet fey and old kin, creepy evil people practising nefarious deeds, and even find themselves in mortal peril (quite a few times!)
I think this book felt like a great romp for a fantasy to me. It started off a bit predictably, but then the story took a turn from where I anticipated it going and things became a lot more exiting and action-packed quite quickly. I found the second half of the story completely enthralling in fact and whizzed through reading it...AND THAT ENDING...
Overall a great story and one I really had fun sinking my teeth into. It's only the start of what promises to become quite an epic series, and I am very much looking forward to seeing where the second one goes now I have read the end of the first. 3.5*s from me :)
jaironside's review
5.0
GUYS THIS CURRENTLY 99p/99c ON KINDLE AND BOOK 2 IS FREE!
IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR EPIC FANTASY WITH HUMOUR AND UNUSUAL CHARACTERS AND DIVERSITY, THEN THIS SERIES IS FOR YOU.
AMENDED to show review of Second Edition
4.5 stars
This is epic fantasy with a difference. Somehow the author has managed to get the feel of George R R Martin or Tolkien or Terry Goodkind, but the plot and sub-plots feed each other rather than being episodes set as way stations on the way to an inevitable destination. At 500 odd pages this is not a light read but it feels like one because the story is told with both realism and warmth, and with a heart that is often sadly lacking in epic fantasy. Another point in its favour is the way it neatly side steps tired tropes while still keeping all the staples of a truly good fantasy. The characters are all well rounded, no one turns up 'just because' or 'as fate would have it' and nothing happens 'because of reasons' - all things which royally piss me off in other fantasy sagas. The pace is good, the sadness is leavened with wry humour, the bravery with conceit and idiocy. You can believe in these characters and I defy you not to care about them.
Rufus was my personal favourite character, although he gave me several moments of severe anxiety. Don't forget to charge your kindle, if you're reading the ebook, like I did! While I did work out some of the twists along the way and as I drew toward the end, the main one, the finale, I did not see coming. And it was the right way for it to end, heart wrenching as it was. If you're looking for a great read that you can lose yourself in, then look no further.
My only quibble was in the number of alternatives to the speech tag 'said', which were used. I'll admit this is a pet peeve of mine and while some of them were odd and, for me, distracting, it did not detract from the overall experience or enjoyment of the book. I look forward to book two eagerly.
UPDATE
I read this when it was first published and I have just finished a re-read or rather a read of the second edition.
I'm upgrading my rating to a solid five stars.
Few books come out perfect - especially first books - but there has been a lot of thought and effort put into this so that the prose was tightened up, pruned back where necessary and over all the humour and the horror and the sadness were allowed to shine through much more for such subtle changes. This is not an easy trick to pull off considering that the author has not materially changed the story, but instead has given us the original story in an even more engaging way.
I laughed out loud. I cried in public (I do not do that as a general rule). And I rooted for all of the main characters in different ways. Rufus is still my favourite but I found myself warming even more to poor Jionathan and to Zachary too. Fae and Luca are all kinds of awesome, of course.
Since book two - The Blood of the Delphi - will be out soon, this was the perfect time to re-read this. Can't wait for the second and third volumes in the trilogy.
Absolute favourite part? It starts like this 'Do not plead to me of justice and mercy. Those are not my qualities...' If I didn't know how awesome the next book is, the series really could have ended there for me. In fire and blood #teamRufus
If you haven't read this yet, what're you waiting for?
IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR EPIC FANTASY WITH HUMOUR AND UNUSUAL CHARACTERS AND DIVERSITY, THEN THIS SERIES IS FOR YOU.
AMENDED to show review of Second Edition
4.5 stars
This is epic fantasy with a difference. Somehow the author has managed to get the feel of George R R Martin or Tolkien or Terry Goodkind, but the plot and sub-plots feed each other rather than being episodes set as way stations on the way to an inevitable destination. At 500 odd pages this is not a light read but it feels like one because the story is told with both realism and warmth, and with a heart that is often sadly lacking in epic fantasy. Another point in its favour is the way it neatly side steps tired tropes while still keeping all the staples of a truly good fantasy. The characters are all well rounded, no one turns up 'just because' or 'as fate would have it' and nothing happens 'because of reasons' - all things which royally piss me off in other fantasy sagas. The pace is good, the sadness is leavened with wry humour, the bravery with conceit and idiocy. You can believe in these characters and I defy you not to care about them.
Rufus was my personal favourite character, although he gave me several moments of severe anxiety. Don't forget to charge your kindle, if you're reading the ebook, like I did! While I did work out some of the twists along the way and as I drew toward the end, the main one, the finale, I did not see coming. And it was the right way for it to end, heart wrenching as it was. If you're looking for a great read that you can lose yourself in, then look no further.
My only quibble was in the number of alternatives to the speech tag 'said', which were used. I'll admit this is a pet peeve of mine and while some of them were odd and, for me, distracting, it did not detract from the overall experience or enjoyment of the book. I look forward to book two eagerly.
UPDATE
I read this when it was first published and I have just finished a re-read or rather a read of the second edition.
I'm upgrading my rating to a solid five stars.
Few books come out perfect - especially first books - but there has been a lot of thought and effort put into this so that the prose was tightened up, pruned back where necessary and over all the humour and the horror and the sadness were allowed to shine through much more for such subtle changes. This is not an easy trick to pull off considering that the author has not materially changed the story, but instead has given us the original story in an even more engaging way.
I laughed out loud. I cried in public (I do not do that as a general rule). And I rooted for all of the main characters in different ways. Rufus is still my favourite but I found myself warming even more to poor Jionathan and to Zachary too. Fae and Luca are all kinds of awesome, of course.
Since book two - The Blood of the Delphi - will be out soon, this was the perfect time to re-read this. Can't wait for the second and third volumes in the trilogy.
Absolute favourite part? It starts like this 'Do not plead to me of justice and mercy. Those are not my qualities...' If I didn't know how awesome the next book is, the series really could have ended there for me. In fire and blood #teamRufus
If you haven't read this yet, what're you waiting for?
theknightswhosaybook's review
2.0
Alright, alright. I grumbled my way through this. I complained constantly. My updates have been grumpy at best and rude at worst. But I’ll give credit where it’s due: at the end of the book, the author COMMITTED.
But the plot was unfocused and I hardly cared about any of the characters. Help?
No, seriously, help. This review is going to be a mess, because in my eyes the book is a mess. The plot just drifts along awkwardly. Sure, there are fight scenes and secrets and drama and stuff. But honestly, the book feels like the whole thing was contrived purely to get the ending into place, without regard for how the book as a whole worked as a journey.
See, Jionat wants to leave Harmatia because he believes he'll die if he stays. So he attempts to leave until he is successful. Rufus follows him. They have now achieved their goal of not being in Harmatia. So now they will... help this woman they just met achieve her quest to rescue a young princess, I guess, because they're not doing anything else? And once that has happened, they will go to this nice little village and relax? And if people come to either hurt them or take them back to Harmatia they will fight back? To defend their goal of not being in Harmatia? Meanwhile ominous things happen back in Harmatia, where they aren't?
It meanders. It feels random. The ending it sets up is one of the best parts of the book, but it isn't worth how unfocused the plot feels. The few arcs that feel more fleshed out — like Rufus and Jionat reconciling and becoming friends, or Jionat struggling with glimpsing the future — are just not inlayed into a plot that deserves them. And then there are all these random side plots that feel like they were completely dropped, like Rufus's awkward romance bit with Luca or a random guy who was killed while the main characters aren't in Harmatia. Certain plots I don't count as "forgotten" because I can only assume they will be picked back up in the sequel this entire book is calibrated to, but the lack of closure on so many things makes the book that much more unsatisfying.
Also, the characters. Oh boy. It's not that I dislike them, it's that 90% of the time I just don't care about them. Unless they're going through something particularly dramatic at the moment, they all come across as aggressively bland. I don't even know what the problem is. They just don't work. Fae is a badass faerie knight that I should love and I barely know if she has a personality. Also, was I supposed to care about her and Jionat and the doomed nature of human/faerie romance? Because I couldn't have cared less.
The writing style was probably not helping the character situation. I definitely didn't click with the general vibe of the story. I think it tended to be too heavy-handed and stilted. There were more than a few moments of objectively bad writing, too many misspellings/misuses of words, and an obsessive use of the description of characters' lips parting. Just parting, constantly, presumably to show emotion but coming across in the cringiest, most unnecessary way.
In conclusion: a few gems hidden in what is otherwise pure, bland frustration.
But the plot was unfocused and I hardly cared about any of the characters. Help?
No, seriously, help. This review is going to be a mess, because in my eyes the book is a mess. The plot just drifts along awkwardly. Sure, there are fight scenes and secrets and drama and stuff. But honestly, the book feels like the whole thing was contrived purely to get the ending into place, without regard for how the book as a whole worked as a journey.
See, Jionat wants to leave Harmatia because he believes he'll die if he stays. So he attempts to leave until he is successful. Rufus follows him. They have now achieved their goal of not being in Harmatia. So now they will... help this woman they just met achieve her quest to rescue a young princess, I guess, because they're not doing anything else? And once that has happened, they will go to this nice little village and relax? And if people come to either hurt them or take them back to Harmatia they will fight back? To defend their goal of not being in Harmatia? Meanwhile ominous things happen back in Harmatia, where they aren't?
It meanders. It feels random. The ending it sets up is one of the best parts of the book, but it isn't worth how unfocused the plot feels. The few arcs that feel more fleshed out — like Rufus and Jionat reconciling and becoming friends, or Jionat struggling with glimpsing the future — are just not inlayed into a plot that deserves them. And then there are all these random side plots that feel like they were completely dropped, like Rufus's awkward romance bit with Luca or a random guy who was killed while the main characters aren't in Harmatia. Certain plots I don't count as "forgotten" because I can only assume they will be picked back up in the sequel this entire book is calibrated to, but the lack of closure on so many things makes the book that much more unsatisfying.
Also, the characters. Oh boy. It's not that I dislike them, it's that 90% of the time I just don't care about them. Unless they're going through something particularly dramatic at the moment, they all come across as aggressively bland. I don't even know what the problem is. They just don't work. Fae is a badass faerie knight that I should love and I barely know if she has a personality. Also, was I supposed to care about her and Jionat and the doomed nature of human/faerie romance? Because I couldn't have cared less.
The writing style was probably not helping the character situation. I definitely didn't click with the general vibe of the story. I think it tended to be too heavy-handed and stilted. There were more than a few moments of objectively bad writing, too many misspellings/misuses of words, and an obsessive use of the description of characters' lips parting. Just parting, constantly, presumably to show emotion but coming across in the cringiest, most unnecessary way.
In conclusion: a few gems hidden in what is otherwise pure, bland frustration.
rickus90's review
5.0
Absolutely loved this beauty of a book. Full review over here: https://rickusbookshelf.wordpress.com/2017/01/03/the-sons-of-thestian-by-m-e-vaughan-the-harmatia-cycle-book-one/
More...