Review: Impressive Fantasy
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 11, 2011
SUMMARY:  4 stars ****  Impressive FantasyI strongly recommend this series for those who enjoy traditional fantasy genre although buyers should be aware that this is planned to be a 9 book series.  This is an example of the quality and the promise that can be found in the independent publishing model.  Gregory Downs is a young author who shows great promise.  I would not be surprised to see that he writes many more quality works.Gregory Downs delivers an innovative fantasy world where Gribly the Thief and Prince Lauro set out on a quest to find the mystical Aura.  On their journey they meet pirates, nymphs and demons with non-stop adventure.  Magic in the book is "striding" which reminds me of "bending" from Nickelodeon's "Avatar: The Last Air Bender" series.FYI- I have written this review on  the first 3 books in the "Song of the Aura" series.  I am going to post the same review for each of the three first books since they are part of the same series.PLOT:  3 stars ***  Slow to developMinor plot ***SPOILERS*** in this section:  Brother Thief starts very quickly with lots of action.  Minor plots are quickly setup as two of the major characters, Gribly the Thief and Prince Lauro, connect early on to begin their quest.  Action continues at a fast pace throughout the first three novels.  Unfortunately, clarity on significance of action is lacking until midpoint of the third book, Grym Prophet.  About half way through the second book, Winter Warrior, absence of context for action became distracting to the overall story.Gregory Downs does a good job in setting up climatic battles for each book to bring closure to current book and then setting up teaser for the next book.  Minor exception was need to clarify concepts behind defeat of the villain at the end of Winter Warrior which was confusing to me.  There was no groundwork set for a major concept which was revealed to accomplish this victory and it could have been more clearly told.CHARACTERIZATION:  4 stars **** Strong charactersGregory Downs builds strong, believable characters.  Dialog is realistic.  Story centers around 3 main characters - Gribly the Thief, Prince Lauro and Elia.  Gregory Downs takes time to build up each character's personality and motives through dialog and varying points of view throughout the books.  Some tension related to main characters motivations and backgrounds are left untold until late in book three, Grym Prophet.  This tension creates some mystery which helps draw the reader's interest.  Author did a good job of balancing this tension versus timing to better understand the characters.TECHNICAL:  5 stars  *****  Well written.Each book has a well thought out ending which balances bringing good closure with building plot tensions for the next book.Editing was well done.  No annoying grammar or spelling errors (actually I noticed one - loose instead of lose early in Winter Warrior - but I will round to zero).Novels have excellent character (point of view) transitions.  This is an area which I have noticed some issues in the independent publishing market.  Gregory Downs has managed this difficult to acquire skill very well.PRICING ASSESSMENT:  3 stars  ***  Good valuePricing Assessment rating is exclusive of the merits of the work which is reviewed in other sections.  I recognize the merits of adjusting value for the quality of product but could not objectively accomplish that goal so pricing assessment is being rated on content length.Gregory Downs work is being setup as a trilogy of trilogies.  Meaning that there will be 9 books in total with each grouping of three being its' own mini trilogy.  Each individual book is short and I would characterize as either a long novella or a short novel.  If this were from a traditional publishing model, my expectation would be that the Song of the Aura would have been issued as a 3 book trilogy (combining each mini trilogy into an individual book) but no more than 5 books (making assumptions that remaining books are comparable in length).  I understand that the independent publishing model allows authors to use alternate strategies to keep individual book price points lower or for artistic needs so I am OK with this model.Book Lengths (as measured by number of Kindle locations):Brother Thief = 3,197 locations (3,292 incl. author notes and preview)Winter Warrior = 3,475 locations (3,590 incl. author notes and preview)Grym Prophet = 3,592 locations (3,701 incl. author notes and preview)As a reference point for long books, typical books in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series ranged from 15,000 to 20,000 plus Kindle locations.  Standard length novels seem to run in the 4,500 to 7,000 plus Kindle location range.