Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½
Owen and Noraya Smith are twins, in a world where such siblings are looked upon as cursed. Brought up as charcoal burners, they leave their village so Nora can avoid an arranged and unwanted marriage, and have the forture – whether good- or ill- remains to be decided – quickly to encounter the party of Prince Basham. He is scouring the country in search of a magical artifact called the Living Blade, which will grants its wielder great power. Assisting him is the half-wight Telen Diaz, a pilgrim/fighter. Owen joins the party, hoping to become a pilgrim himself; Nora decides to return home, but that option is removed from her as the village has been taken over by bandits. Fortunately, Diaz has followed her and is able to lend assistance when necessary. Nora eventually becomes his student in the fighting arts, and they all head to the temple/brothel of Shinar where the immortal seer Suranna can provide insight to the blade’s location. But the cost of her information is perilously high, since she has plans for both Nora and Diaz.
I believe this is what’s called “grimdark” fantasy fiction, which is basically as it sounds: in its simplest terms, think Game of Thrones rather than Lord of the Rings. I’ve no problem with the resulting “mature” content. Much of it here does seem necessary to the plot, though the concept of a vast, hidden city in the middle of nowhere that’s a gigantic, all-encompassing pleasure palace does pose certain logistical queries. There was also something slightly creepy about teenage Nora increasingly crushing hard on eighty-seven-year old Diaz – even if half-wights, like half-elves, age very well. I have a couple of other nitpicks. An almost entirely untrained Nora is capable of going all ninja and taking out an entire platoon of brigands. And there’s an assault on the city that comes out of nowhere, and whose purpose and participants both seem ill-defined.
With the negatives out of the way, on the positive side, I really liked Nora. She has a very sharp character arc over the course of the novel, but always seems to have been a bit of a bad-ass, even as a charcoal burner. It’s clear there’s a very significant future in front of her, and I sense she and Suranna will end up facing off down the road. I appreciated the way the heroine largely doesn’t care about the Living Blade; such apathy is pleasantly refreshing, though I suspect that opinion is going to change before long. Whitecastle has a good eye for world-building as well, giving the reader enough of an impression, without getting bogged down in too many details. It appears future volumes may concentrate more on Diaz. As I found him about the least interesting of the major characters, that will stop me shelling out for more. Still, as a one-off this made for an entertaining enough read, though I felt the first half, before they arrived at Shinar, was stronger and more interesting.
Author: Timandra Whitecastle
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Living Blade series.