Posted by This book starts off with the sack of a city which sets the tone for a story of violence and warfare. During the sack of the city we see the raid from the point of view of a soldier on the gates who has a wife about to give birth within the city limits. They haven’t been able to evacuate yet, and his second in command convinces him to leave his post and go find his wife, the fall of the city is inevitable and he wants him to get his wife and child out if it’s still possible. His wife was no slouch and would normally have been on the gates with him as an archer, but she’s 9 months pregnant and as it happens, giving birth at the worst possible time. Well, one thing leads to another and he ends up a single dad.
Strax runs from the city and ends up in a smaller village at the base of a mountain where he seeks refuge for his sons (his wife had twins) to hide out for a while. There are a few time skips where we get to the kids being teenagers within a couple of chapters. Strax had kept his wife a secret, he literally had told his sons nothing about their mother, not even their name. As they get older they figure things out and eventually Strax breaks down and tells them what happened. He’s been riddled with guilt their entire lives and couldn’t bring himself to tell the story. Once they know how their mother died they set off on a journey of revenge and justice to go find those responsible and make them pay.
I had thought this was going to be a YA story since the kids are younger-ish, I’m honestly not sure how old they are when they set off, maybe 16-18 years old. However, there’s a lot of violence, a lot of cursing including the word fuck, and a lot of elusions to sex and whatnot, so I guess this is really more of an adult coming of age story.
The twins are as opposite as you can get, one of them is super calm, reserved, smaller, and more in touch with general human emotion. The other one is a larger brute-like character who thinks with his sword and his dick rather than his brain or heart. I really didn’t like that guy, he’s SUPER impulsive, he’s super bitter, he’s just unpleasant to read about. He’s so unpleasant he overpowered my feelings towards the other brother, who generally was much more sane and easy to root for.
There’s a secondary POV as well, a guy named Varn who’s fighting to keep the invading enemy at bay. He’s a stubborn dude. He sees the city about to fall and instead of evacuating and trying to get as many people out as possible he wants to go charging to his death to take out as many enemies as possible before he dies. LEEERROOOYYYY JENNNKKIIIIINNNSSSS. I did like his character more than Angry Brother, but he still annoyed me at times with his stubbornness. He was a bit more mature than the boys since he’s older, and so I enjoyed his perspective on things more than the boys.
The world building is pretty neat, the boys find themselves with new powers and they’re pretty intense. That said, they don’t know how to wield it and that can be dangerous. They’re also very unsure at first how to even feel about being ‘augmented’ or having new limbs that glow blue and do magical shit. They’re super hesitant and first and one of them outright thinks it’s an abomination.
The pacing kind of threw me off because there was such a huge amount of time skipped very early on, and that cause some of the character’s motivations and feelings not make a lot of sense to me. For instance, the two brothers are going out on their revenge quest almost 15-20 years after the prologue events where their mother died. They’re both thinking to themselves that these soldiers that they’re fighting could possibly be the ones that killed their mother. But the soldiers the boys are attacking aren’t going to have anything to do with the original sack of the city since it was so long ago. Presumably, anyone who’s still enrolled in the army 20 years later (which most likely wouldn’t be) are going to be higher-ranking members and not walking the streets/manning the front lines anymore. The boys often think about how this and that soldier could have been the one to kill his mother and like, my dudes, that’s highly unlikely. There’s also a lot that’s just skipped over as far as how they got to be so good with weapons. We’re told that back in the day their father trained them in weaponry and he was a soldier so naturally they are now good with swords too, but we “saw” none of that. They also have an abnormal ease throwing themselves into battle for the first time, you’d expect a lot of nerves, or mixed feelings on all the chaos and death, and there’s really not much of that mentioned.
I think this would appeal to people who like stories of justice-seeking journey’s, coming of age, old school sword and sorcery fantasy, and odd-couple pairings. I did finish this one, however, I do know it’s not going to be a semifinalist so unfortunately it’s going to be a cut.
I am also saying good-bye to a few more that I know won’t be semifinalists, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth your time so please check them out if you think the descriptions or reviews sound good! Many of these books have made it through multiple rounds of cuts but unfortunately shit’s about to get real brutal as I have to keep cutting to get down to just one finalist.
SPLITTING DAWN BY KATHERINE D. GRAHAM
This one will be for people who enjoy lots of different love interests and never knowing where it’s going to go. Vampire elves, demon princes, and a princess with a lot of options!
FULL REVIEW WITH LINKS HERE
THE CRIMSON SPELLSCAPE BY JINA S. BAZZAR
I really enjoyed this spunky main character. This was easy to get into, fast to finish, and overall enjoyable.
FULL REVIEW WITH LINKS HERE
CALLUS AND CROW BY D.B. ROOK
This is super neat, it’s a cross between Western and Weird and has a native main character — NOT common!!!
FULL REVIEW WITH LINKS HERE
I wish the very best to all who were cut, y’all have an audience and I hope that they pick up these books!
As a happier aside; congrats to Fogbound, Blood of the Hunted, and The Light Must Hold for making it through yet another round of cuts! These are still under consideration for semifinalist status.