Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #7: The Fourth Five Fall

* Disclaimer *

Everyone is different and likes and dislikes different things. Reading is no exception. One person’s all-time favorite might seem too bland or too high stakes for another. That being said, the opinions of our judges in this contest are just that, opinions. Just because we let a book go, doesn’t mean it isn’t good. It could be your next favorite, who knows?

However, since this is a contest, there can be only one winner. Hence it is necessary to work our way down to our favorite from our batch of thirty titles. We will be letting books go five at a time, until we reach our semi-final list for Round One. These groups of five are being let go in no particular order. So, the books we say goodbye to today are not worse than books we let go in the next batch. They are just the first ones we read that didn’t quite click with us as a group.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can learn more about the contest here.

Today we say goodbye to our fourth group of books from Round One of SPFBO#7. In this group of five are some intriguing concepts, good writing, and interesting characters. Unfortunately, for different reasons, they didn’t stack up against the rest of the competition.

Here are our Fourth Five to Fall.

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A World Broken by Carol A. Park

They say that long ago, the world was unbroken. That there was no war, nor poverty, nor disease, nor famine. That the gods themselves walked among mortals—choosing some to be their instruments of peace and justice among the races. They even say there was no winter.

Then, it all fell apart.

The five races of Erets have lived in one accord since the inception of the world. But now, the seeds of hostility are growing due to a dispute over an innocuous plant, and three people find themselves entangled in affairs they would have once found unbelievable.

An advocate—trained to promote mutual understanding between the races—must confront the unimaginable prospect that peace is out of reach.

A priest—who refuses to bend the knee to the gods he serves—finds the only vow to those gods he has made might be harder to keep than he expects.

And a seeker—a gentle warrior sent to uncover the truth behind an unthinkable murder—stumbles into a labyrinth of lies that could shatter the world.

These three must save the world that they know. But are they already too late?

In A World Broken we follow three characters. Each is unique and has problems of their own to solve but get swept up in the larger world as the plot moves along. The world itself is unique with many different races coexisting, more or less, together. It feels real and the many aspects of the world are fleshed out well.

Our judges connected well with the characters and found each of their plot threads interesting. We liked the way the magic worked and thought that, overall, the prose was good. The biggest issue was for each character you are dropped in the middle of the action, with little explanation. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but we are also presented with a myriad of names for places, people, gods, etc., making it hard to keep up with who was who and what was what. If the murder mystery hook had happened earlier, before introducing other characters, it might have been a bit easier to follow and let us get more immersed in the story. But sadly we had to let this book go.

Duplicity of Power by S. Lynn Helton

An improbable partnership of noble and rogue.
An unlikely quest—key to the fate of the Six Realms.
Power struggles and the machinations of gods.
And a legendary artifact of Power.

Not always a Shadower, Namid is now one of the leaders of this select group, this guild of rogues in the decrepit city of Rhadanthus. Here she has found a refuge from darker times.

Rescuing a stranger is not usually part of her nightly haul. Her decision to help the wounded man sparks a series of events that upends her hard-won haven and sends her fleeing for her life.

Another’s quest snags Namid and casts her across the Six Realms of the Monarch and beyond, entangling her and others in power struggles, the machinations of gods, and the dangers of a past thought left behind. What at first seemed a fool’s errand to restore a legendary artifact of Power becomes a gambit for the fate of the Six Realms. And Namid doesn’t even believe in fate!

This is another story that drops you straight into the world. We meet our main character in a bar, waiting for something unknown to happen. She eventually teams up with a team of ne’er-do-wells to complete their quest.

While the world seemed interesting, and the writing flowed well, there was a bit too much telling and not enough showing. And for whatever reason the story just didn’t click with any of the judges. So, we had to let this one go.

Echoes of a Storm by Alan Scott

Set within a small mountainous and forest covered kingdom called Zarekland, which lies within the continent of Talocants, this story follows two girls named Kathleen and Jane. As you delve into the story, secrets will be revealed, battles will be fought, lives will be brutally cut short or changed forever, and the deviant and the Werewolf will make themselves known.

This dark, gritty, fantasy novel explores many themes such as, relationships, forbidden love, loss, power, prejudice and ultimately, the true ‘monster’ that lurks inside of us.

We start with attempted murder and lead into a story of a nationalist resistance trying to unseat the throne and a good mix of political intrigue. But since this is fantasy, there are also shapeshifters, namely werewolves!

If you’ve been following Fantasy-Faction in this contest for a while you will know there are a couple things our judges dislike in books more than anything else. The biggest of these is infodumps. And unfortunately, this book was full of them. And while one of our judges praised the story as a good example of a shapeshifter drama, it was not enough to make it through to the semi-finals.

Girlgoyle by Better Hero Army

Being a gargoyle isn’t easy. Tiffany wasn’t even born one, but now she has wings, and in the gargoyle world it means she’ll have to fight ghosts. A scary proposition for someone who was once one of the living, especially when all she wants to do is get home and see her parents again.

Enter the Hollow Mountain, a place caught somewhere between life and death, where Tiffany’s inner light—if she can learn to harness it—can bring her the power needed to face the monsters she thought only existed in her dreams.

Soon she is fighting jealous rivalries within her own ranks, struggling to unravel the mystery of her recent death, and trying to avoid being killed a second time by a maniacal ghost named Bones who is seeking the destruction of the gargoyle world.

This YA fantasy has a unique premise and world. Instead of the usual fare of elves or vampires, the characters here are gargoyles. We follow the main character as she dies and is reborn as a winged creature whose purpose in life to keep others from suffering the same fate.

There is a lot to love about this book. The worldbuilding being far and away the best part. It’s such an interesting idea and is explored in great detail and with prose that suit the YA feel well. However, that last bit became its biggest issue for our judges. While YA books are of course welcome in the contest, the ones we have liked in the past have been stories that could bridge the distance between adult and YA readers. This one, while very well done, was heavy on the YA tropes and didn’t click with us the way other titles had. If you are a YA reader and want to try something different, this would be a great book for you, but unfortunately it didn’t hold up against the other books in our list.

Wrath by Alex Raizman

When dungeon delvers and dinosaurs clash, who can survive?

Newborn Dungeon Cores must choose what entity they help contain, and that choice determines what monsters they are able to summon. After being executed for crimes forgotten in death, Tira is given the chance to make that choice. Tira chooses Acekorah, the Primeval Terror, a being so dangerous few cores will risk trying to contain it.

The danger wasn’t important. Tira remembers dying. If containing Acekorah means Tira will face greater danger, that’s a risk worth taking, because the Primeval Terror walked the world long before the races of Man roamed the earth, and Cores bound to him are able to summon beings from beyond the veil of time.

Now, forged in the fires of Tira’s wrath, the dinosaurs will walk the world anew.

We had a bunch of LitRPG titles in this year’s batch! Wrath follows a woman who is killed and reborn as a Dungeon Core, the sentient gem that shapes the dungeons of the world she lived in. Her job now becomes killing off heroes to grow more powerful, so she can contain an evil being bent on destroying the world as they know it.

The concept and execution of this book were really interesting to read. It was not quite as heavy on the stats as the last LitRPG title we reviewed, but still got pretty deep into the mechanics of the world. And while I personally would love to play the game this book described, there wasn’t enough meat to the story in between the gaming elements to keep our attention. But if this is a genre you enjoy, you should definitely try this one out!

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We would like to thank all the authors for letting us read their work! We congratulate you on having the courage to enter the contest and wish you all much success in the future!

Our judges this year are A. A. Freeman, Julia Kitvaria Sarene, Kartik Narayanan, Kerry Smith, Lynn K., and Jennie Ivins (me). If you’d like to learn more about us, including our likes and dislikes, you can read about them here.

Any queries should be directed at me, Jennie Ivins, via DM (Facebook/Twitter).

Title image by fotografierende.

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