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A review by colossal
Skyfarer by Joseph Brassey
3.0
A light space fantasy book that's action-packed and inventive but feels extremely derivative.
The Drifting Lands are continents floating in an endless sky. Somehow humans live on them and can travel between them using magical skyships and sorcerers that allow travel via teleportation portals. Aimee de Laurent is a newly graduated portalmage just starting as apprentice to the legendary mage Harkon Bright aboard his skyship Elysium. An unexpected outcome of her first teleportation portal puts the Elysium and her crew in the middle of an invasion of a peaceful kingdom by the Eternal Order led by the dark knight Azrael and soon everyone is fighting for their lives.
This feels very much like Star Wars to me. I can also see parallels to Final Fantasy. It's interesting that we only get the most cursory introductions to the supposed main characters Aimee and Harkon and the crew of their skyship. Instead the focus is on the more interesting character of Azrael as he stalks through the book like a deeply-conflicted Darth Vader. That's not to say that anyone gets much character development: it's very clearly an action-packed story that requires a lot of exposition without much room for other things.
I do have to say that I'm sad to see that Michael Underwood edited this, as the editing is probably my biggest complaint about the book. There are some real clunkers delivered here and there in the text (including in the cringe-worthy opening paragraph) that really should have been sorted out in the edit stage, as well as some truly awful story-telling cliches, particularly including several "as you know Bob" scenes.
The ideas and characters are fun; the execution needed more work.
The Drifting Lands are continents floating in an endless sky. Somehow humans live on them and can travel between them using magical skyships and sorcerers that allow travel via teleportation portals. Aimee de Laurent is a newly graduated portalmage just starting as apprentice to the legendary mage Harkon Bright aboard his skyship Elysium. An unexpected outcome of her first teleportation portal puts the Elysium and her crew in the middle of an invasion of a peaceful kingdom by the Eternal Order led by the dark knight Azrael and soon everyone is fighting for their lives.
This feels very much like Star Wars to me. I can also see parallels to Final Fantasy. It's interesting that we only get the most cursory introductions to the supposed main characters Aimee and Harkon and the crew of their skyship. Instead the focus is on the more interesting character of Azrael as he stalks through the book like a deeply-conflicted Darth Vader. That's not to say that anyone gets much character development: it's very clearly an action-packed story that requires a lot of exposition without much room for other things.
I do have to say that I'm sad to see that Michael Underwood edited this, as the editing is probably my biggest complaint about the book. There are some real clunkers delivered here and there in the text (including in the cringe-worthy opening paragraph) that really should have been sorted out in the edit stage, as well as some truly awful story-telling cliches, particularly including several "as you know Bob" scenes.
The ideas and characters are fun; the execution needed more work.