Review: An Excitingly Sinister Story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 8, 2013
The Corpse King is the story of the young arbiter apprentice D'Arden Tal and his master Havox Khaine who are investigating some strange rumours they have heard on their travels; the rumours of a mad king ruling a kingdom of corpses. As it happens these wild tales turn out to be quite true, but the situation is more complicated than that.The story starts out quite slowly and balances quiet scenes and scenes of action very nicely all the way through. The story contains not only the outer conflict but also an inner conflict of the main character who several times questions the things his kind (the arbiters) does and the way of the world.Beside the quite intriguing story it is very well written. It contains, in particular, some very good descriptions of the atmosphere. One of my favourite passages is this:"As they proceeded on, the rank stench of recent death was slowly replaced by the stale musk of old death, and the corpses became less rotten and more skeletal. The sour pit in D'Arden's stomach grew deeper as they went, the cold fingers of anticipation playing up and down his spine." - Kellen, Christopher (2011-09-09). The Corpse King (Tales of Eisengoth) (Kindle Locations 316-320). . Kindle Edition.It is quite a page turner really. I found that on every other page some new exciting thing was mentioned that I instantly wanted to hear more about. I swallowed the whole thing quite fast, but then it is not that long either. It is an easily conquerable story in that sense; short, well written, exciting.The only thing about it that prevented me from giving it my top rating is that its impact on me was not quite what I think it could have been. I felt like I was watching a very interesting play being acted out in front of me instead of getting the feeling that I was in the play myself. This was partly, I think, because Christopher Kellen does not really go into much depth about the characters, so even though I liked them I did not know them well enough to feel really animated when something happened to them.This is, however, exactly the kind of introductory short story that would definitely make me want to read the novel in which's(?) universe it is set. From the Amazon description:"With this novelette, welcome to the world of Eisengoth: a dark fantasy realm ruled by insane gods, and the setting for ELEGY: Book One of the Arbiter Codex. Heroic fantasy for fans of Conan (Robert E. Howard), Kane (Karl Edward Wagner) or Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher (Andrzej Sapkowski) with a Lovecraftian-horror flair."More review by Hypervorean on Numinous Publication, a blog dedicated to high fantasy: [...]