A review by peapod_boston
Lamentation by Ken Scholes

4.0

In is blurb, Orson Scott Card states that he wishes his first book ("Ender's Game") had been this good. He's right. Scholes' first, full-length work is a thing of beauty. Scholes' prose is beautiful and clean, his plotting is tight and twisty, and his world-building is spot on; he has created a real, dense world with a history and metaphysics that feel real. But he doesn't beat you over the head with it. Instead, all these things provide a venue for a collection of flawed but genuine characters who invite you into their lives, struggles, triumphs and failures.

This is everything I have been looking for in a fantasy novel for the last five years, and the first book in recent memory that I could not put down.

As a writer, this is exactly the caliber and quality of fantasy I hope to write.