Tag: Self-Published

Review: The Lost War

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Title: The Lost War (2019; May 16, 2023 reissue)
Author: Justin Lee Anderson
Pages: 528
Series: Eidyn #1

It jumps out of the gate with a strong opening and an interesting premise and finishes with a flourish, but I found the intervening chapters to be fairly standard high/epic fantasy fare that never blew me out of the water.

Justin Lee Anderson does a beautiful job introducing the characters, the stakes, and the world at large, but I just wasn’t as invested in the subsequent proceedings as I hoped to be. It’s surprisingly light and funny and I found myself reminded of Michael J. Sullivan’s Riyria books with a splash of Mike Shel’s Iconoclasts trilogy (sans its darker impulses). If you loved either of those series, I think you’ll enjoy this too.  

★★★

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Idols Fall

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Title: Idols Fall (April 21, 2021)
Author: Mike Shel
Pages: 614
Series: Iconoclasts #3 (Series Tracker)

Shel is a truly gifted storyteller and he’s woven a trilogy-capping book that is dark, twisty, funny, wholly satisfying, and bloody brilliant…major emphasis on the “bloody.”

Sometimes the third book in a series starts to feel stale if it’s not charting new ground, but Shel has injected enough fresh energy into this story and its characters to pay off this final adventure splendidly. There’s so much fantasy goodness packed into the pages here: demonic possession, talking swords, beasts from hell, false gods, geopolitical conflict, cults, and of course, a dangerous expedition into an ancient cursed ruin. It’s all rendered beautifully on the page by Shel’s delightful prose. Bump this trilogy up your TBRs folks. This is a masterful conclusion to an outstanding series.

★★★★½

My thanks to the author for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Aching God

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DaVQZiHW0AALaj8Title: Aching God (2018)
Author: Mike Shel
Pages: 598
Series: Iconoclasts #1 (Series Tracker)

Aching God appeared on my radar after seeing several glowing reviews on the r/fantasy subreddit. Now, I don’t always connect with books that r/fantasy fawns over, but this was certainly not the case with Aching God, which is a thoroughly engrossing debut novel that I enjoyed immensely.

The book follows Auric Manteo, a retired mercenary, of sorts, who leads an expedition to return a cursed gem to the haunted temple from whence it came. It’s a straightforward story, but told in expert fashion. The writing is superb, which is not always a given in self-published fare. When a character referred to something as an “ensorcelled receptacle,” I knew that this was the right book for me. I expected a fairly simplistic dungeon quest tale, but it’s really so much more than that. Author Mike Shel has built out the world of Hanifax in rich detail and explores a great deal of the map with compelling encounters and fully-formed characters.

This is for anyone who enjoys dark fantasy and a well-told story. It’s certainly one of my favorite books of 2018 and I will be eagerly awaiting the next installment in the series, as Aching God builds a very solid foundation from which to jump off from. It feels like sword and sorcery Indiana Jones — and I’m very here for that.

★★★★¼ out of 5