A review by sherwoodreads
Age of Myth by Michael J. Sullivan

This is the start to a new epic fantasy series, set in the far past of the world first introduced with the author's Riyria series. Sullivan is writing in the mode of Tolkien's descendants, which partly means magic, elves, humans, goblins, dragons, but there is also an underpinning of morality plus hints that there is life beyond the physical world that hearkens back to Tolkien's mythic paradigm. No grimdark, though violence and moments of horror there are aplenty, balanced with humor.

Sullivan is playing around with the writing of history, and how legends are made. The reader of his previous work will enjoy seeing the truth behind the marvelous historical events as retold in those books, but Sullivan is also playing around with what happens to the truth of events in the now, and why stories take on new life in the telling, the first example of which early on had me laughing out loud as the story of the God Killer is born.

This is a much rougher world than we met in the previous books. The Rhunes, or humans, are living a scratch existence roughly analogous to the northernmost tribes of the UK's ancestors. They regard the neighboring Frey as gods, believing that these long-lived, gorgeous people can't be killed. The Rhunes have been traditionally used by the Frey to fight their battles against other races or other inconvenient Rhunes, and in turn are allowed to continue to grub for meager existence.

The story proves very quickly that the Frey, their long lives notwithstanding, are human, and here is probably the one weakness that sometimes poked me out of the story: the Frey have all the immediate passions that we do, creating a paradigm that better befits lives that may make a hundred years max rather than two thousand or more. But this is an issue shared with a great many books that feature beings who supposedly live for millennia: I should think life at that length would look very different, very *not* human.

But that is a small quibble. There is so much to enjoy here--the fast pace, the great characters both male and female, and above all their complexity. Sullivan brings off some nifty twists because of that complexity, keeping the energy high and the pace fast.

I fell in love with fourteen year old Suri the mystic, her wolf Minna, and old Arion the Frey mage, and with Persephone, Malcolm, Gifford, Raithe, Sarah and Moya. Even Nephyron. And now I have to wait a whole year to find out what happens next, even though the entire series is already written? Argh, I say! Argh!

But I will add that Sullivan brings this volume to enough of a resolution to sustain the reader, while laying the groundwork for the arc to come.


Copy received from NetGalley