Review: An amazing new fantasy book
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 13, 2011
Such a lot of plots and the action starts immediately... and I quickly got lost in the fast pace of the book! I knew I was going to lose sleep nights as I'd be staying up late reading. This is a hard book to put down. I almost felt I might miss something while I slept!Readers of fantasy books are going to love this story! It is a fantasy tale, predominantly! A morality tale even.Ashling creates a believable world as rich as that of the great fantasy authors. It's easy to see his world's complexity favorably compared to the likes of Mercedes Lackey, etc. It's a long book and there's a lot of explicit m/m sexual content, including a rape.I never lost sympathy with the two main characters. I felt so sorry for them that they couldn't really talk to one another. The "chains" were binding each of them in a continuing tragedy. They seemed unable to reach out to one another to overcome the downward spiral. The actions were be hard to watch at times and set in a strange setting but the characters were very believable.The story is the carefully crafted product of a really competent storyteller, an excellent writer. The characters change and grow. There are some really good comedic characters, some really good "laugh out loud" parts. What fun!At the end, I'm sure glad this one is only the first of three books. I really want Anaxantis and Ehander to ... oops, guess I shouldn't say that yet, huh?Amazingly, now that I'm finished with the book, I've gone back to read certain parts over again and again. Strange to think you could get more from the story, the characters, the writing, than you thought at first. Interesting in itself!P.S. How about an audio book of it?