First off, I am a huge (Pun not intended) fan of fantasy novels. Last week I went to my local Half Price Books to grab some Forgotten Realms books that were missing from my collection. Sadly, they did not have the third installment of the Transitions trilogy, and that turned out to be a very good thing. Why would that be good? Because I jumped on to Amazon to get book three when I started browsing other books in the genre and stumbled upon the book that I am reviewing today.
Before I purchased this book I was looking at the reviews, and read the sample page. I also contacted the author himself on Facebook and he responded right away. I was impressed to see that he was very responsive to people leaving feedback and answering their questions. I was intrigued to read this story, and was glad to be supporting the work of a self published author.
I ordered the paperback version since I prefer to have the physical book over the eBook format. I am still on the fence on the whole physical vs eBook format in general, although it is more convenient to have the eBooks on my phone or tablet so I may eventually lean that way.
Amazon gave me a shipping date of one week, but the book arrived at my door in three days! I was impressed with the quality of the paperback, it was set up and bound similar to a graphic novel. The cover is thin, but durable and the pages were thick, so they do not crease up. That's a big deal for me since I am pretty rough on paperbacks. Enough of that, back to the review.
We start right off with action and we are quickly introduced to two of our main four characters in a way that makes you feel like you have read about them before. It doesn't feel forced or awkward as most books in this genre do. Actually when you read the beginning, it plays out like a movie scene. J.T. Williams does a really good job with his pacing, and you never feel that too much is being crammed in. One thing that bothers be in the genre is when an author takes a really long time explaining the background or the setting for the story. With this story the settings and environment is introduced in a way that flows along. That may sound like it is not that big of a deal, but it really is. I wanted to stop reading Game of Thrones for this reason, and that book is loved by millions.
I did not want to put this book down. It just flowed smoothly and I like the fact that we focus on our core characters. To me this was the key to the book. We are not bombarded with throwaway or non important characters at all. Without spoiling the story we have our main cast of four "Half-Blood" Elves, Pirate Dwarves, Narwhals (Yes NARWHALS!), a Mermaid, a Demon, a Dragon, and some supernatural characters splashed together in a way that made me think of a cross between an RPG game and a classic 1970s wuxia film.
I want this to be a spoiler free review for two reasons. I want you to read it for yourself and we need to support independent publishers. This was a fun read, and it was the first time in a while that I didn't want to put the book down. The ending was intense, and I can't wait to read the second installment. The main question for me at this point is should I get the paperback or just get the eBook and start right away!
On to the score. I just started this blog a few months ago, and usually review on a beard scale of 1-5. The exceptions were comic book reviews that I graded on a ten point scale since I was sharing those reviews with another site that graded on that scale. With that being said, I have not given out a perfect score on either scale in the short time that this blog existed, until now.
5/5 Beards
Since this is my first perfect score, it is only fitting that we give the book an award. So I award my first Golden Beard award to Half-Bloods Rising (Half-Elf Chronicles Book 1) by J.T. Williams!
First Golden Beard Award Winner!
This story did something that no other book as done for me in quite a while. It kept me interested and made me read right on through. Only Stephen King has been able to do that for me, so it is a big deal that a book in the fantasy genre was able to pull of a feat like this for me.
Below are the covers to books 2 and 3, along with a link to the author's Amazon profile. Head on over to at least check it out and see what he has to offer. The books all have a sample, and if you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber you can read them for free. I plan on reviewing these books as well as his Saints of Wura series.
You can also head on over to his personal blog site and sign up for his mailing list for a free short story. You can also get his Twitter and Facebook links there as well.
My attempt at making a caricature of the book cover. I failed to make the head bigger :(
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