This past week I’ve been checking out the first hour-ish of 5 different entrants to this years SPFBO contest in order to find more SFF authors to love. SPFBO is all about self-published books (and books I think need a bit more love and support this time of year!).
If you want to see a list of the entrants, check out the master list.
The Sword of Wisimir – Allen Stroud
The Sword of Wisimir
Allen Stroud
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A thief, Minister, Magister and Jarno Herren? This blurb talks about 4 different characters in one go and there’s wildly different plot threads from first glace. I’m curious about whether these 4 are friends, foe, or something in between.
It also claims this is already a 6 book series! So it’s a big fantasy adventure I think. I’m excited to try it out, and I am intrigued about the characters but I’m a bit lost as to what plot I’ll be reading about.
First impressions:
The Sword of Wisimir introduces us to multiple characters with a focus on three of them so far. We have a thief, Jack von Drey, someone within the court, Urin, and a watchman, Jarno. There’s alos Black Magister Leel who is working with Urin and is a mage. I liked that the characters were very different and there’s a clear thread of them joining into one story because it centres around Jack stealing money before the first page.
The book itself starts of with action and a chase scene, with Jack having to be clever to try and not get caught. The running through Wisimir also introduces us to the City a bit, focusing on world building around cramped housing situations, the docks and how cheap labour is needed, that there’s a criminal underbelly touched about and just why the Watchmen let people be.
Within the first few chapters there’s a couple of deaths already, and the tone is very dark too. There’s a gruesome part but for the most part the story doesn’t centre around direct violence. We have bribery and corrupt politics as a part of Urin’s storyline, and we also have a bit of magic shown by the mage characters.
Overall my first impressions are positive, although it’s not as fantas orientated (yet?) as the usual fantasy I would choose. I would like to finish this book to find out where the story and characters take us though.
Pradyutita – Geetha Krishnan
Pradyutita
Geetha Krishnan
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Pradyutita is a retelling of the Mahabharata, which is an old Indian Epic. From a quick google search I am a bit worried I’ll feel a bit lost at first (there’s an extensive family tree!), however I’m intrigued to see how Geetha has adapted the story.
First impressions:
My first impressions of Pradyutita is that it’s just not a fantasy book, or at least there’s no fantasy elements in the first part that I read. It’s focused more on family dynamics and politics and honestly reads more like literary fiction or historical fiction.
The story focuses around the manipulations of who will be the Maharaja, and they reason out why a certain member of the family can’t possibly be Maharaja. For this I found the reasoning to be ableist as they treat this person with pity and repulsion because he’s blind. Whilst this issue may have been from the original Indian Epic, I’m not fully sure but a retelling can improve aspects like this which Krishnan didn’t do with their writing.
On top of this I found the general writing to be poor. It definitely need a good copy edit, or at least some beta readers. At one point it skips from someone saying Perdu should attend a place, and then suddenly he’s agreed to go when he hasn’t. Things like basic continuity in the same scene meant that I wasn’t interested in reading more.
The Swordsman’s Lament – G.M. White
The Swordsman’s Lament
G.M. White
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First up, this sounds a bit like a fantasy mystery which I am totally up for! Belasko must find the real killer in order to clear his own name, and I’m excited to understand why he’s been set up and how he and those around him react to this. Because there’s talk of vengeance and royal bloodlust, I’m ready to read more about this royal family too.
First impressions:
Swordsman’s Lament is about the “best swordsman” who will only retire when there’s a good enough replacement for him. I like that we’re seeing older characters and highlighting that he has to work differently than a young adventurer/hero we see in fantasy.
Belasko’s personality is shown off by how he treats others instead of just telling the reader he’s a good person. I like that we see him take action to help uplift someone else with the influence he has with the king, prince and pirincess.
Whilst I liked our main character, I didn’t get into the full story enough to judge it plotwise. Overall I probably would pick it up, but there’s nothing that gripped me to add it to the top of my TBR pile.
The Power of Conviction – Catrin Russell
The Power of Conviction (The Prime Series, book #1)
Catrin Russell
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The blurb is heavily focused on demons, and also gives a bit of backstory to the world. This is a world that was almost overrun by demons, but the priesthood (people with light magic) have managed to stand up and fight them back.
Anaya sounds like a character that will face a lot of conflict in the book, both internally and externally. She’s been brought up to believe one thing, and I’m intrigued to see how Samael makes her doubt this.
First impressions:
The Power of Conviction is an extremely descriptive book and writing style, and potentially overly descriptive. There’s descriptions of the room, the food found in a pantry, and other characters bodies. These are all in chunks and paragraphs too, so it just felt like a little too much and it was details that didn’t add to world building or story.
I enjoyed the main character Anaya who is strong willed and is seen to be doing what is right. I also loved the female friendship with her neighbour, Lenda, who is also in training so it’s slightly mentor-ish too.
I also liked the world building around demons, although with them comes some gory scenes so if you’re put off by that it won’t be a book for you. Demons are animals, foxes, felines, etc. This is taught in one of the lessons too where we also find out demons have a human form. The form of the demon, based on animal, depicts how powerful it can be.
I’m going to continue reading this as I did want to know what would happen next.
Lords of Deception – Christopher C. Fuchs
Lords of Deception (War of Four Kingdoms Book 1)
Christopher C. Fuchs
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I’m going to be honest, this blurb did not grip me and make me want to read unfortunately. But this is why I’m doing this hour long test! So I’m expecting assassinations, political tensions, and possibly leading up to war and some battle scenes.
First impressions:
The prologue from Lords of Deception really gripped me, and I wanted to find out the mystery of what’s going on. The story is very political in nature and almost like game to be played. I’m still unsure of the overall plot and motivations from the first bit I read, plus it has limited fantasy elements so far. It does mention alchemy which could be close to it though so I’m looking forward to reading more.
In terms of the characters, they’re all linked in some way but I really want to figure out each of their story arcs and why they’re important for the book. I kept thinking why these characters had been chosen to have chapters compared to some of the secondary characters. Because of this I’d probably pick this up again as I’m intrigued to find out more.
Overall this was a fairly good batch of SPFBO books and I would pick up most of them at some point, but none of them were big “wow” I have to continue reading this right now kinda reads which was disapointing.
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