With a unique and imaginative blend of epic fantasy, humor, and heroism, this debut author team crafts a riveting tale of a kingdom at war, and the four men who stand poised to defend it.
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With a unique and imaginative blend of epic fantasy, humor, and heroism, this debut author team crafts a riveting tale of a kingdom at war, and the four men who stand poised to defend it.
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Good. Good condition. Very Good dust jacket. A copy that has been read but remains intact. May contain markings such as bookplates, stamps, limited notes and highlighting, or a few light stains.
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Used Good in Good jacket. Light wear to cover, slightly bumped corners, pages clean and unmarked. Firefly Bookstore sells items online and in our store front. We try to add images and descriptions when we can, but if you need additional information or photos of the books we list, please contact us.
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Fair in fair dust jacket. 388 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket is worn and torn. Book itself and pages are in nice condition! -Disclaimer: May have a different cover image than stock photos shows, as well as being a different edition/printing, unless otherwise stated. Please contact us if you're looking for one of these specifically. Your order will ship with FREE Delivery Confirmation (Tracking). We are a family business, and your satisfaction is our goal!
The first book of a fantasy series (the third recently published) set in an Empire called Volstov, this book follows four separate characters: Royson, a Margrave (or wizard) in exile; Hal, a clever young country bumpkin; Rook, the loud and antisocial rider of Havemercy, a mechanical dragon; and Thom, a 'Versity student charged with teaching the dragon riders manners.
I've been aware of this book since before it was published, as these authors did the impossible - they were picked up by a publisher because they wrote fanfiction. They created The Shoebox Project, a Harry Potter fanfic that had a huge following. I've wanted to read their published work for years but I don't think it ever came to print in the UK. As it was, I only go hold of a copy this summer, and I started reading eagerly.
Is was surprising how much I struggled to get into it. The book starts off on the wrong foot, with a pages-long info dump that was gruelling to get through, let alone understand. It didn't help very much that the POV changed every half-dozen pages, with a new info-dump to get through. The one character I liked from the off was Rook. His dialogue, his thoughts, his actions were all so vibrant and strong. The other three characters seemed to blur somewhat here-and-there, but Rook was unique and always interesting.
As a whole, I feel it failed to deliver any real satisfaction. The relationship that blooms between Royson and Hal feels fake and is the most tedious thing I've read since Twilight. There is a lot of 'I think only of you, I adore you, I must have you - but no! It is forbidden and we must not!' happening. Not even hot-and-cold, just tepid-and-lukewarm. It is like that until the last three chapters. It really pissed me off that so much time/space was dedicated to this and their wooden dialogue. In retrospect, the relationship between Rook and Thom is a lot more dynamic - and a hell of a lot more sexual, but that aspect is apparently accidental on the author's behalf as [spoiler] they are brothers[/spoiler].
Relationships are the meat of the book. Some are interesting, some are not. The characters are very well developed and I found myself half in love with some of the side characters (Greylace - unf) but the true thing the book is in dire need of is action. There are nearly no scenes where magic is seen used - I think the most we get is a table exploding. There are some good parts where Rook is flying Havemercy in battle but otherwise there is little violence. Royson spends most of his time in bed, with Hal fluttering over him, in the most dull hurt/comfort scenarios I've come across. The way Hal saves the day is really, really pathetic. I don't think a book has annoyed me this book in a very long time. I don't know if I'm going to pick up the second in the series, Shadow Magic. There are four different characters in that one, so I won't have to suffer through Royson/Hal - but saying that, Rook will be absent. It was a good concept, but it just failed to deliver any satisfaction for me.
I SO wanted to like Havemercy, but alas, I found it terribly lacking. It was unfortunate that while reading the passages dealing with the alpha males of the Dragon Corps, I found myself wondering, "do these women authors have ANY guy friends? These interactions don't ring true at all!" I'm not sure why two females decided to leave women almost entirely out of their debut novel, especially when it is so clear that they don't quite know how to write from the male viewpoint. I had really never thought about whether authors were able to write the opposite gender believably, until reading a book entirely about men, written by women, in which something was very askew. Perhaps it is not a gender thing, but a storytelling thing. It's possible I would have noticed the same odd tonal problems in the lead women characters, if there had been any.
I think I could have dealt with the feeling of something being "off" in the depictions of the men, if the other main story arc, that of a fledgling romance between an exiled magician and his younger student (also a man) had not devolved from something truly sweet into melodramatic hand-wringing over how hard it is to be gay in fantasy-dragon-land.
I don't like to trash debut novels, but what draws me into books are usually the characters, and when an entire company of dragon-riding men just seem like cardboard cutouts, and the only realistically drawn characters are joyless worrywarts, it just kills any chance of really getting into the action of the novel.
What a bummer.