Review: Book Review of First Chosen (Tears of Rage Series #1)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 8, 2012
I was thrilled to find that the sequel was available as I could hardly wait to get started on the continuation of this story. Now back to my review about First Chosen (Tears of Rage Series #1).M. Todd Gallowglas demonstrates his exceptional storytelling skills in this book. It starts as the story of a soon to be born baby girl. Saent Kaeldyr, a Celestial being, invested the majority of his faith into this unborn female so that when she had the greatest need, she would release his god, Grandfather Shadow, from imprisonment.What an adventure! Gallowglas has ceated a Parthenon of gods reminiscent of Greek and Roman mythologies while remaining unique to his world he describes. The gods here jockey for power and status using humans and daemyns as their pawns.He's created a whole spiritual hierarchy for there are Celestial beings below the gods, including Saents, Angyls, and Daemyns; of the two tiers of Gods, the five greater Eldar are the more powerful while the lesser Eldar scheme to get the number of dominions needed to join their ranks; and there are Incarnates and beings who have power over the gods.Yrgaeshkil,a lesser Eldar with power initially only over the dominion of Lies, and queen of the daemyns, sees an advantage to forcing the child, now a young woman, Duchess Julianna Taraen of House Kolmonen, to release Grandfather Shadow.There are numerous groups of competing humans with unique powers of their own, generally drawing from the power of their respective gods. Despite the meddling of the lesser Eldar, the fascinating action rests with the human interactions.This is an exceptionally well written fantasy. There are so few errors missed by the editors that the story flowed smoothly from one challenge or conflict to another. I found the story captivating and am well into the sequel as I write this. It definitely earns 5 stars from me.