* 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 first group of books from Round One of SPFBO#9. 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 First Five to Fall.
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Becoming a Druid by Mike Mollman
A struggle for survival.
Grahme has wanted to be a druid for as long as he can remember.
Talented but headstrong, he runs afoul of a despotic, Mind-controlling mage during his initiation quest. The price of failure is death. Intrigue and distrust have turned the druids against him.
Haggard and hunted, he must make impossible sacrifices or lose everything.
An apprentice learning to be a druid is given his last chance to land a position after screwing up, twice. This story had some interesting things going for it. It had a fast paced opening, whimsical storytelling, and some cool animal morphing magic.
Unfortunately, it didn’t hit well with our judges. Some thought the beginning was a little too frantic. Others bounced off the character, who is supposed to think he’s better than everyone else, but that made him hard to connect with. But our biggest issue was the info-dumping. There are a lot of names and places, which feel like the beginning of a big world, but are delivered too much up front. We would have liked to be eased into things more and have the world grow organically around the story instead of getting everything upfront in big blocks.
Overall, there are some good pieces in here and if you like whimsy and animal morphing than maybe you should give this one a read!
Between Land and Sea by Paul Mouchet
Why can’t sea witches have their happily ever after?
Calypso, the sea witch, was unjustly convicted of using blood magic and banished by the crown prince she was destined to marry. She now finds herself cursed; a hideous beast forced to live in shame with only a surly crab for company.
When she discovers her best friend, Princess Luna, is missing, she reluctantly teams up with the crown prince, the merman she hates, to save the mermaid she loves.
The search leads the feuding pair ashore, thrusting them into a harrowing race against time, one that holds the fate of the princess and the entire merkingdom in the balance.
In this enthralling tale of magic, love, and transformation, a perilous adventure will test the heroes’ resolve, reshape their destinies, and unearth an ancient evil that has been lying in wait for centuries.
Fairytale retellings can be amazing. And we are a group that has loved them in the past when done right. This particular story is a retelling of The Little Mermaid, but not of the original. It’s more of a reworking of the Disney version than of the Hans Christian Anderson one. It leans on the YA end of things and is full of romance but doesn’t get on the spicy end of the spectrum.
This seems like a title that just wasn’t for us. Not because it was YA, or even because of the romance, it just didn’t connect with us the way we hoped it would. The language is very flowery and the story a bit too straightforward. We were hoping for something more complex. But if you enjoy fairytale retellings and light romantic reads, this might be the book for you!
Heart of Fire by Raina Nightingale
A slave determined to ride a dragon. A child chosen to ride the obsidian guardian.
Camilla has always been told that humans are inferior. They cannot use magic. If they bond to dragons, they will doom the creatures to extinction. She has never believed a word of it. She has always known she can use magic, and she suspects it is the elves who harm the dragons by keeping them to themselves. Now, she is presented with the opportunity of a lifetime: a dragon’s clutch is hatching and while she will earn the wrath of her captors if she is caught, she has the chance to see a dragon hatch and perhaps even to Recognize.
Kario’s people have feared dragons since time immemorial. When an unrealistically huge black dragon flies in while she is hunting, she is certain she will die. Instead, her life is changed when Nelexi, Obsidian Guardian of Areaer, chooses her as her final rider. Kario takes the name Flameheart, but she is soon homesick and afraid she is insufficient to be the partner of a god.
As you might expect, we love us some dragons! Bonding to a freshly hatched dragon under the masters’ noses, awesome. Becoming the rider of a god-like black dragon, too cool! This story had everything going for it, but it didn’t live up to its description the way we hoped.
While we loved the premise, the beginning felt rushed and too convenient. The fact that a slave could get such easy access to the hatching dragons without being caught needed more explanation or maybe a longer build-up and more challenges in the way. The book could also benefit from some additional editing, to bring out the interesting story that exists within it. While we don’t mind YA, this seemed a bit too simple, for our tastes, and unfortunately we had to say goodbye.
The Altar of My Fate by Michael R. Schultheiss
A warrior questing for glory.
A slave-girl with a secret.
Can they claim the ancient altar?
Trained to the warrior’s path, Rosteval yearns for glory and craves adventure in unknown lands.
Leading the war-band he created, he sets off on a quest to brave a formidable desert and the swords and arrows of a growing number of enemy tribes.
He expected the mounting dangers, but he didn’t expect Ghaitta, the beautiful slave-girl with a secret, and the power and peril of an ancient altar, an artifact of the vanished Shaper race.
As his enemies multiply, Rosteval is forced to confront an immortal adversary and the looming specter of defeat. Can Rosteval and Ghaitta avert disaster, and claim the fateful power of the ancient Shaper altar?
Brimming with fierce tribes, deadly perils, ancient powers, and sexy slave-girls, The Altar of My Fate is the epic fantasy adventure you’ve been craving.
There is potential in this book. The magic system is a highlight. And the opening chase scene was a great place to start the story. From there though, we had a lot of problems with the execution.
This is another story that has issues with the dreaded info-dump. Too many names, places, and races. Too much description of armor and things unimportant to the immediate story, while lacking in characterization or something else to hook us into the book. There is good stuff in here. But the good is lost under the bad. With another round of editing this could be a solid story, but again, we had to say goodbye.
The Crossing by Laurie Janey
Those who cross into Rheta from other worlds don’t usually arrive alive. Berro collects the crosser bodies for a prestigious secret project headed by his academic mentor, and he’s proud of his role, but when a living, breathing woman arrives in the forest through a crack in reality, the project and Berro’s ordered life are thrown into disarray.
On Rheta, nature is thriving, and conflict is a distant memory. Chaos and cruelty are things belonging to other worlds, other times, and most Rhetari have lapsed into blissful complacency. But Berro is at the epicentre of an event that calls the delicate balance into question.
As the crossing project unravels, he confronts the ugly truths about the civilisation he lives in, the work he’s committed to, and the broken parts of himself.
While the description of this book was interesting, we discovered after reading that it was also much more on the science fiction side of the shelf, than fantasy. We all bounced off it pretty hard because of that. And while it might be a fantastic book, it doesn’t really fit the theme of the contest, and we had to let it go.
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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 Adawia Asad, Agatha Lopez, Blake Skelton, G. R. Matthews, Lana, Julia Kitvaria Sarene, Kerry Smith, Robert Max Freeman, Yaniv Rosenfeld Cohen, 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 congerdesign.
Julia Kitvaria Sarene
Having read Becoming a Druid, I don’t get where the idea ‘the MC thought he was better than other’s. He was a the best shape changer, but throughout, he saw that other Druids have different strengths and you never see him despise or look down at others other than for a second in one combat where inwardly he expects a competence which isn’t apparent. You do see others resenting him because he closed mouthed, because many die around him, and it is apparent that his teachers have kept him a little too sheltered, but his heart is in the right place.
It was also obvious to me that the place named were analogs to places on the British Isles.
As for The Crossing, it’s the second SF book I’ve seen in this SPFBO, other being Angel in the Rust by Jason Link in Becky M’s batch. I do know of one Semi finalist from SPFBO 6 (I think) which made Semi Finalist because it was so damn good (The Nothing Within by Andy Giesler) and original, being the best Amish post apocalyptic book I’ve read. This doesn’t sound that original.