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A review by mistled
The Strange Task Before Me: Being an Excerpt from the Journal of William J. Upton by Sean Gibson
5.0
Good lord, I want more of that. That ending though.
I got towards the end of this and honestly thought, "Well, he's wrapped things up... how are there still a few pages to go?" And then...
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The Strange Task Before Me is a novelette about a bookseller who has been given the seemingly impossible task of tracking down an exceptionally rare tome in just a few scant days or suffer the unspoken consequences. The entire thing is told as a series of entries from the diary of William Upton, the aforementioned bookseller. I know a few of you are wary of the journal entry format, but don't let it worry you. With the whole of events taking place over a very short time period, William's diary doesn't have time to get sidetracked into nonsense, and William (Sean) is enough of a writer to not make the common mistake of leading us to think "yeah, this is fine, but would be so much better in person."
The formatting quickly takes a backseat to the characters and the general sense of "I want to know all the things about all of this."
We have the mysterious client, who is seemingly overpaying for a tome that no one really wants to talk about.
The book itself, which may be powerful... or not... but certainly makes us speculate as to what other powerful books could exist and what groups may want them and why.
The possibly insane and probably violent Baron whom we better see more of in a future story... look, I couldn't figure out what gif to use for the Baron, so have this unicorn instead.
Oh, did I forget to mention that unicorns are real? I mean, probably. It's difficult to say, but magic is real, if hidden and mostly unknown, in the world of Camelot Shadow, so I'm leaning towards 'yep'.
Which leads us to the elephant in the room. This is a prequel of [b:The Camelot Shadow|24020362|The Camelot Shadow (Camelot Shadow #1)|Sean Gibson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439188786s/24020362.jpg|43082272], so you may be worried that you need to be familiar with that novel before reading this one. Absolutely not. While you should read The Camelot Shadow because it's really good, this story stands on its own. They share a main character, but they are set decades apart, so don't worry about which one you read first. Just read them both.
For full disclosure, the author sent me a free epub of this. And for fuller disclosure, I pre-ordered a copy on Amazon after reading it, because we should support good writing. Also, it's a dollar at the moment (always?), so it's not exactly breaking the bank. And it's on Kindle Unlimited if you have that. Look, I just want you to read good fiction, and this is certainly that.
I got towards the end of this and honestly thought, "Well, he's wrapped things up... how are there still a few pages to go?" And then...
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The Strange Task Before Me is a novelette about a bookseller who has been given the seemingly impossible task of tracking down an exceptionally rare tome in just a few scant days or suffer the unspoken consequences. The entire thing is told as a series of entries from the diary of William Upton, the aforementioned bookseller. I know a few of you are wary of the journal entry format, but don't let it worry you. With the whole of events taking place over a very short time period, William's diary doesn't have time to get sidetracked into nonsense, and William (Sean) is enough of a writer to not make the common mistake of leading us to think "yeah, this is fine, but would be so much better in person."
The formatting quickly takes a backseat to the characters and the general sense of "I want to know all the things about all of this."
We have the mysterious client, who is seemingly overpaying for a tome that no one really wants to talk about.
The book itself, which may be powerful... or not... but certainly makes us speculate as to what other powerful books could exist and what groups may want them and why.
The possibly insane and probably violent Baron whom we better see more of in a future story... look, I couldn't figure out what gif to use for the Baron, so have this unicorn instead.
Oh, did I forget to mention that unicorns are real? I mean, probably. It's difficult to say, but magic is real, if hidden and mostly unknown, in the world of Camelot Shadow, so I'm leaning towards 'yep'.
Which leads us to the elephant in the room. This is a prequel of [b:The Camelot Shadow|24020362|The Camelot Shadow (Camelot Shadow #1)|Sean Gibson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439188786s/24020362.jpg|43082272], so you may be worried that you need to be familiar with that novel before reading this one. Absolutely not. While you should read The Camelot Shadow because it's really good, this story stands on its own. They share a main character, but they are set decades apart, so don't worry about which one you read first. Just read them both.
For full disclosure, the author sent me a free epub of this. And for fuller disclosure, I pre-ordered a copy on Amazon after reading it, because we should support good writing. Also, it's a dollar at the moment (always?), so it's not exactly breaking the bank. And it's on Kindle Unlimited if you have that. Look, I just want you to read good fiction, and this is certainly that.