Posted by This starts with a prologue depicting the unleashing of an ancient evil entity when two characters are raiding a dungeon type setting looking for a magic book. Then we quickly cut to a man named Sam — he’s a bookworm, dutiful son of a single mom, he has a little bit of a curiosity streak but ultimately he’s more driven by family duties than dreams of exploration. He’s pretty responsible and does the shit he needs to do at home without begrudge the responsibility. He’s an easy character to like, but I did not like his brother, Basim, at all. You meet his character as he’s talking about how he trains his slingshot skills on stray cats. At least the mom was like, “Wtf? Don’t do that!”
It was a little jarring to read that Sam was 38 years old because I had thought he was between 16-22. The way the story was framed felt very much like a coming of age book. The way he thinks about life and what he wants to do with his, the dreaming of exploring but being bound down by younger siblings, thinking of his mom first and not wanting to get in trouble — the usual themes you see in coming of age books. He thinks about how his father abandoned the family and now he’s stuck caring for them which is usually the role of someone in that 16-22 year old range. However, he also thinks of himself as “only” 38 years old, and when the narration refers to Sam and his friend that he grew up with they’re referred to as “the boys” and not “the men.” So, maybe these folks age a lot slower than typical humans and more like elves? (I’m speaking as a 37 year old myself).
Well, then things get real when his mom is murdered. Someone was trying to steal something his mother has been hiding from him his whole life, something she hid underneath the chicken coop for years. When they went to bury her body she disappears into the earth and it’s heavily hinted at that she’s put her soul/consciousness into a magic book that starts to glow. His mother was a “Guardian” of one of the two holy books of the land, the Book of Yin and the Book of Yang, and now that they have it they have to go on the run because whoever killed his mom won’t stop until they find what they are looking for. To make it worse for Sam, his brother is missing and likely kidnapped by the same people. So, he’s on sort of a dual mission to save his brother and keep the book safe.
The world building is pretty old school medieval epic fantasy. The magic is prevalent throughout the world with anyone being able to use minor magic, but “Pagers” are those who have access to original versions of the holy texts and they’re able to perform huge feats of magic. I think this would appeal to people who like fireballs being thrown around in the old school handwavey kind of magic rather than a strict magic system like Sanderson.
The writing style was very direct without a lot of time spent on descriptions, and the pacing was fairly tight without a lot of meandering (at least within the parts that I read) these two things combined made for fast reading. There were times when a large uncommon word was used and it did kind of take me out of the moment. This is a taste thing, but as I’m reading along I kind of want to forget that I’m reading when it’s SFF. What I mean by that is the word choice should just sort of flow naturally with commonly used words because if a really long and uncommon word is used it sort of “reminds me” that I’m reading and takes me out of the moment. Even if I know what it means, and usually I do, it’s like hitting an off-key note in the middle of a song and it disrupts my head movie because it’s attention grabbing. I look for extensive vocabulary and more interesting word choices in things like poetry, but again, your mileage may vary.
I set this one down at 30% knowing it wasn’t going to be a semifinalist but I think it could be appealing to those looking for a coming of age, old school magic, running from assassin kinds of books.