Review: Beautiful world-building
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 8, 2013
Beautiful and immensely detailed world-building characterizes the three short stories in Justyna Plichta-Jendzio's collection, Dark Children of Naor. Geographically the world encompasses icy wastes and desert beauty, plus everything in between. Biologically there are animals familiar and strange--including dragons. And then there are the mysteries of vampires and more, ghost stories come to life in distant lands.The author peoples her world with intriguing characters too, both male and female, and the biggest strength of these stories may well be the depth of its feminine leads, in battle or equally in court intrigue. Readers who like their histories and backstories to be fully developed and carefully detailed will thoroughly enjoy these tales. Others might wish the stories were longer, giving more space for the history to weave underneath an adventure's events. But overall, the collection is deeply fascinating and promises more to come in an intriguing strange world, not far, but just far enough away from our own.Disclosure: I was given a free ecopy of this book by the author with a request for my honest review.