Titanshade – Familiar Yet Fantastical

June 18, 2019June 18, 2019 / QuillToLive / Leave a comment

Alright, I am back from my wedding and honeymoon where I read nine books on the beach – so I have a ton of new stuff to talk about and am excited to get back into it. Let’s see if I still remember how to write a review. The first book I want to talk about this week is Titanshade, by Dan Stout. It is a fantasy buddy cop book and one of our dark horse selections for this year. I was eager to tear into it for a number of reasons, the simplest being “can it do a better job at a fantasy buddy cop story than the train wreck that was Netflix’s Bright from last year.” The short answer is yes, it is much better, but that bar was extremely low and there is a lot of space between “terrible” and “amazing.”

As mentioned, Titanshade is a fantasy buddy cop book. The plot is fairly straightforward: our lead cop protagonist, Carter, is an excellent but unconventional cop with a troubled past that has mired his career in the cases that no one else will touch. He lives and works in the city of Titanshade, a Siberian industrial city that holds high esteem in the world because it produces most of the known supply of oil. The city sits nestled in a northern icy wasteland next to a mountain that contains a chained god who is constantly being tortured by devils (we don’t really know why). The god’s agony produces a massive amount of heat, warming the area and allowing workers to live in the shade of the titan. Unfortunately, Titanshade is running out of oil. The wells are running dry and the city needs to find a new source of income and power to remain relevant in the world. So when Carter stumbles onto a murder case that threatens upcoming talks to transform the cities industries he is assigned a young plucky non-humanoid partner to work the case and keep the city from metaphorically dying.

The murder investigation is fun and interesting, but if you are familiar with a cop or detective dramas the story isn’t really something you haven’t seen a million times before. Carter is assigned a young partner named Ajax, an adorable yet effective cop who serves as a good foil to Carter. He is this strange bug humanoid creature, and while he and Carter have a ton of friction at first they unsurprisingly come to trust and like one another over the course of the book. Titanshade’s plot doesn’t really stand out and does nothing to reinvent genre clichés that I personally find extremely tired. If you are hoping that this would be the new frontier of cop stories then you might be disappointed. However, this book still has a ton to offer readers if they have the right expectations.

In my opinion, the target audience of Titanshade is people who like both cop shows and fantasy and are looking for something that bridges the gap. While the plot isn’t innovative, the characters are extremely enjoyable and the world-building is fantastic. Carter and Ajax are just fun to read about, and it’s hard not to find yourself enjoying their relationship even though you know where it is going from page one. Originally I was going to say that the world-building is simplistic, but a more accurate adjective would be to say that it is streamlined. Titanshade’s fantastical elements are fairly subdued. There are a ton of different fantasy races, all cool and original, but all of them are essentially humans with very different physiology. There aren’t tons of psychological or cultural differences between the species. Additionally, although there are magic and fantastical things – they are incorporated to accomplish things that we already have in the modern world through the use of technology. Dan Stout has essentially taken our existing world, and stripped a bunch of the tech, and then replaced it with things that are powered by magic. The result is a world that feels both extremely familiar, yet exciting and fun to explore. It is a really cathartic read, giving you a tried and true plot that you are sure to enjoy – in an original setting that enhances instead of distracting from the plot. My only complaint with the world-building is that there were still some pretty big questions left unanswered from book one, that I can only assume Stout will answer in later books.

If you like cop shows and fantasy books, you will almost certainly like Titanshade. Although it doesn’t break a lot of new ground, the book is a wonderful reskinning of popular cop tropes with a lovable cast. Thank you Dan Stout for giving me an absolutely perfect beach read, and I can’t wait to check out what is next for Carter and Ajax. Go check out this debut book when you get a chance.

Rating: Titanshade – 7.5/10
-Andrew

The Dark Horse Initiative – 2019

March 5, 2019 / QuillToLive / 1 Comment

Every year the Quill to Live sit down in December to plan our collective reading schedule for the next year. It’s a long process, and it heavily involves combing through release dates of series we are following and, more importantly, digging into the hundreds of upcoming and highly anticipated book lists made by publishers, authors, other reviewers, and general fantasy and sci-fi fans. Through this process, we give our yearly reading schedules a little bit of structure – but one of the other benefits is picking out potential dark horses to keep an eye on. If you are unfamiliar with the term, a dark horse is a competitor who comes out of nowhere against all odds to win. In our case, we use it to refer to books that almost no one has heard of that we want to check out or keep an eye on. Sometimes this results in us reading terrible books that we might or might not review depending on how productive we feel our criticism will be. However, other times it results in us being able to champion new and upcoming authors who deserve more recognition.

Recently, we have been getting a lot of requests to describe the 2019 books we are excited about, in particular, the dark horses we have our eyes on. Thus, going forward we will put out a list of our annual dark horses in case you want to keep an eye on them as well. We will put this list out earlier next year, and while we will do our best to review every book on this list, the inclusion of a book does not guarantee we will be able to get to and review it. Here are the dark horses The Quill to Live is watching in 2019 (in no particular order). Goodreads links are on the pictures:

For The Killing Of Kings, by Howard Andrew Jones: As I mentioned we are a bit late on this list this year, so we have actually already reviewed this one. We loved it, check it out!
Sky Without Stars, by Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell
The Luminous Dead, by Caitlin Starling
The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless
Perihelion Summer, by Greg Egan
The Priory Of The Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon
Titanshade, by Dan Stout
Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
Gods Of Jade And Shadow, by Silva Moreno-Garcia
Famous Men Who Never Lived, by K Chess
Sixteen Ways To Defend A Walled City, by K. J. Parker
This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The Ruin of Kings – Reverse Goldilocks

February 28, 2019 / QuillToLive / 1 Comment

Here we have one of the mega-debuts of 2019. Published by Tor, The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons has had one of the largest marketing pushes I have seen in years. I have seen advertising for this book literally everywhere, and it somehow already has a TV deal with Annapurna. As I picked it up it felt too big to fail, and I was extremely curious to see if this massive first entry would live up to the hype or fall short. After reading it, I feel like it surprisingly somehow managed to do both.

The Ruin of Kings is about Kihrin, a thief (sorta) with a destiny to bring ruin to kings (hence the title). Our story follows Kihrin in two timelines that alternate each chapter. In the first, we read about Kihrin’s present life as a slave and his attempts to escape bondage and death while pursuing his destiny with a mysterious order of magic users. The other timeline tells Kihrin’s backstory and explains how he ended up in his current predicament. The alternation of the timelines is one of the novel’s largest strengths, and I think Lyons did a very good job matching the two stories to feel relevant to each other at all times while evenly disseminating information about the world, characters, and plot. This is not an easy thing to do, and Lyons managed to instill a great deal of urgency in both timelines that make the book a fast read despite its 800+ page length.

The problem with the book is that despite its even storytelling, neither timeline has enough story, world, or character building to be satisfactory. The pacing of the book is extremely fast, often to the story’s detriment. Lyons moves Kihrin through the world at a breakneck pace, and I constantly felt like I didn’t spend enough time with any location or character to fully understand them. For example, we start the book in an interesting city with a famous slave market that Lyons builds up to be compelling and mysterious. Then before we can learn more about it, she ejects Kihrin via a metaphorical cannon into the surrounding ocean. Once there, he enters a giant maelstrom filled with enormous sea creatures that hunt him. We learn enough that I want to know more, but then quickly move past and never revisit. In the other timeline, we learn that Kihrin is part of an esteemed thieves guild, and get to see him go on a regular heist. However, we never get a sense that there is anyone other than him and one or two other members in this “giant” thieves guild before it is metaphorically burned down and Lyons moves on to a new plot point.

Lyons moves between ideas so fast that you never really get to sit with them long enough. The shame is I really like her ideas. Almost all the places and things she shows the reader are awesome. I just needed another 400 pages to slow the pacing down and learn more about these small pockets of the world. However, this segues into the other major issue that plagued me in this book: I really don’t like Kihrin. He is a spoiled, melodramatic, Gary Sue who whines so god damn much it is unbelievable. Look, I understand that this is supposed to be a coming of age story and that he grows into a better person, but 800 pages is a reallllly long time to put up with his annoying tendencies. He definitely improves by the end of the book, but I feel like there is still a lot of work to go.

I am actually glad that The Ruin of Kings is becoming a TV show because I think it has a fantastic setting that will do well in a visual medium. However, despite the river of creativity that Lyons has put to paper, the original source material leaves a little bit to be desired. I suspect that less picky readers will enjoy this book a whole lot more than me, so if it sounds interesting to you definitely give it a shot. As for me, I am disappointed that The Ruin of Kings’ fast pacing and exhaustive length greatly hampered my reading experience.

Rating: The Ruin of Kings – 6.5/10
-Andrew

Empire Of Silence – Not Quiet Enough

July 24, 2018 / QuillToLive / 1 Comment

We are back to our regularly scheduled programming. We hope you all enjoyed Malazan week, but all things must come to an end and this week we decided it would be a good opportunity to talk about some books we have been reading that we didn’t enjoy as much. Up first is Empire of Silence, the first book of the Sun Eater series, by Christopher Ruocchio. I have seen a lot of positive reviews for this book so far, so critics are not in agreement about this book. I would recommend you check with a few reviewers before you decide to read or ignore the book, but the best way I can sum up my feelings on this novel is that Ruocchio seems like he tried to write Name of the Wind in space, but didn’t quite nail the formula for success.

The story is told in the past tense by our protagonist, Hadrian, as he details the incredible things he has done from a prison cell where he awaits his death. The book establishes early that the end goal is an event where Hadrian destroyed a sun, killing untold numbers of people in order to win a war, thus earning the nickname “Sun Eater”. However, first we should back up and talk about some world details. We have a futuristic galactic empire where people have entered an extremely intense class system. The empire is at war with a host of alien scum, and the empire is doing poorly. Hadrian, is the first in line to the throne of an uranium empire/kingdom that rules a single planet like an European feudal lord. The book follows Hadrian’s slow fall from grace and his brother’s rise. This results in him leaving his home empire and going out to see the universe (after a fashion).

As I mentioned before, the core problem I have with this book is that it feels like he tried to write space Name of the Wind (which I am going to assume all of you know), but Ruocchio captures a lot of what is wrong with Rothfuss’ book without any of the good. This book has glacial pacing with a pretty unlikable protagonist. The first 300 pages of the book are essentially world building and Hadian whining that being a space prince is hard. Unfortunately, I just didn’t find the world that interesting. It felt extremely hollow and I didn’t get any sense that it was functional outside of the narrator’s immediate surrounding. For example, there was a lot of time spent talking about the uranium economy because it directly relates to Hadrian’s family – but it felt like it was the only information I got about the empire’s infrastructure in the first half of the book (which is huge by way, clocking in at around 800 pages total).

In addition, what makes Rothfuss’ meandering and slow style acceptable is he is probably one of the best writers prose wise to come along in the last decade. Empire of Silence, on the other hand, has some prose issues. Ruocchio feels like he is constantly trying to be profound and deep in his writing, which makes the entire book just come off as heavy handed and melodramatic. Chapter 13 starts with “My world changed with the ringing of the bells. Deep as the cracking of stones beneath the earth they rang”. It is just…a lot, and Ruocchio constantly bombards you with these over the top statements, which detracts from all of them. On top of this, the ARC copy I was reading was poorly edited and I was finding grammatical errors and typos every few pages.

On the positive side, the plot did interest me until its slow speed turned me off. I think Ruocchio has some great ideas in his head, but had a lot of trouble putting them onto paper. With a better editor and some serious cutting of pages, I think this could have been a top book of the year as opposed to a slog. Unfortunately, when you write a book this big (which required a huge time commitment from the reader) the small things like editing and pacing tend to make or break the reading experience. I was not a fan of Empire of Silence, but if you like the idea of Name of the Wind in space then maybe you will.

Rating: Empire of Silence – 4.5/10
-Andrew

The Thousand Deaths Of Ardor Benn – A Gritty Adventure With A Cast Of One

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018 / QuillToLive / 4 Comments

I am back from Europe where I bought way too many heavy books that I had to carry home. While on my trip I managed to read a number of books that I am excited to talk about, starting with The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn, by Tyler Whitesides. The book actually comes out today, and since I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about it, I thought I would do my duty to bring it to your attention.

Ardor Benn is a massive (~800 pages) heist novel that I have had my eye on for awhile. It is Tyler’s debut work and is extremely impressive in size and scope for a first book. The story follows the aforementioned Ardor Benn, ruse artist extraordinaire, as he steals from the rich and gives to himself across the archipelago in which the story takes place. The world and plot that Tyler has created in this book is definitely its best quality, and is one of the most interesting settings I have come across. Ardor, known for his con talents, is sought out by a priest who hires him for a multi-stage heist to save the world. The heist part of this heist novel is excellent with each stage being complicated, exciting, and engrossing as you watch Ardor and his crew work through a series of roadblocks on the way to their prize. The pacing is mostly good, with the book moving quickly despite its massive size, but there were a few moments where it felt like the plot was dragging its feet as it went through the minutiae of planning various ruses. In the end though, the plot kept me deeply invested until the last page despite a couple of issues becoming apparent the deeper I got into the novel. However, before I talk about the bad, let’s talk about more of the great: the worldbuilding.

The world of Ardor Benn is fascinating, deep, and well written with a complicated nation laid out for you over the course of the novel. You slowly learn about the backstory, government, religion, and economy of the islands, and Tyler has made an original and interesting world that I want to be in. In addition, there is a “magic system” that revolves around a substance called “grit” – material that has been fed to, and pooped out of, dragons for processing. Depending on the material fed to the dragons, different kinds of explosive grit can be made to do a number of different things such as: make orbs of light, cancel gravity, create explosions, or form barriers. The book heavily revolves around grit, and it is a cool idea for a weapon that results in tons of weird fights where people are using the various effects to gain an upper hand.

Although I loved the world and the plot, Ardon Benn was not flawless and as I got further and further into the book, a number of small issues started to snowball. First, the characters. A key issue with this heist novel is that despite the book having multiple POV, more than one antagonist, and a number of side characters, there is really only one character of import in the story – Ardor Benn. Ardor is a great character himself, but the more time that you spend with his supporting cast, the more you realize that they have no depth and are only there to make Ardor look good. Take Ardor’s partner in crime and oldest friend, Raek. I was super excited to get to know Raek, a goliath of a man who is great at math, because his introduction was awesome. However, as the book progressed, Raek would disappear for hundreds of pages at a time – only to return when Ardor needed a cool tool or gadget that only Raek could make. Then there was the thief that Ardor partners with for this massive ruse, Quarrah. Quarrah was clearly meant to be a major part of the narrative, even being one of the POV’s through which the book was narrated. But at the end of the day, Quarrah’s story really only consists of her having internal monologues about one of two things – how her skills as a thief have left her woefully unprepared to be a con artist (which while true, got super old after 400 pages of it) and how Ardor Benn was the greatest person she has ever met in every possible way. Both Raek and Quarrah has no depth at all, and I found myself very unmoved when they revealed their backstories later in the novel. I am slightly exaggerating when I say the only character was Ardor; both the priest who hires them for the job and the King they are trying to rob (spoilers) are interesting and fun – but it doesn’t do enough to make up for the fact that 80% of the book revolves around Ardor. The book is simply too long to spend that much time talking about one person.

The one additional problem that Ardor Benn has, besides some of it cast, is Tyler tends to over explain what is happening in the book sometimes. There was one instance in particular that is burned into my mind, where one character threatened another (very obviously) and Tyler wrote what felt like a paragraph of internal monologue of the threatened character saying “this guy is threatening me”. A big part of the fun in heist novels is the balance of understanding what is going on, and the mystery of guessing at what you don’t get. Tyler leaned a little to much into giving the reader full understanding and it turned a few passages that might have been thrilling into dull exposition.

Despite ragging on it for two paragraphs, I want to stress that the plot and world of this book are one of a kind and I definitely still recommend it and will be continuing on with the series myself. This is a very impressive debut and Tyler Whitesides is clearly a talented writer with a lot of potential. However, there are still a few kinks in his writing and this book desperately needs some more leads to share the narrative load. All in all, it was an original and thrilling read, and if you can get past some issues I am sure you will love The Thousand Deaths Of Ardor Benn.

Rating: The Thousand Deaths Of Ardor Benn – 7.0/10
-Andrew

Soul Of The World – An Interview With David Mealing

August 1, 2017 / QuillToLive / 1 Comment

I have been really lucky recently, getting the chance to talk to multiple of this year’s debut authors. This week I got to talk with David Mealing about his massive new book, Soul of the World. It was a huge debut novel that impressed me with its numerous magic systems, giant scope, and interesting world: you can find the review here. Due to how big an undertaking the book seemed to be, I had a lot more questions about Mealing’s writing style compared to past interviews I have done, but there is still some great teasers for book two if you are looking for hints as to what is going to happen! Enjoy:

How would you elevator pitch Soul of the World? When I talk to other people and recommend it I find myself just gushing endlessly as I try to explain all the cool things in it. How would you sell it in one breath?

Fantasy is *so* hard to pitch. I’m terrible at it. That said, my go-to is: “French revolution with magic, set in an alternate-world colonial America. Think Marie Antoinette alongside a magic-infused Iroquois Confederacy.”

There’s a lot more going on in the book (and thank you for any gushing over it!), but I think that’s a fine starting point.

What is your writing process in general? What is the anchor or starting point for your story and how much of it do you map out in advance and how much is made up as you go?

I’m very strict on process. Three sessions per day, with a spreadsheet to track the output from each session against an overall daily/weekly/monthly goal. I’ve always found it hard to work for long periods on any given day – I need at least a few hours in between each writing session to let the scene and story arcs soak before I continue. Usually I’ll do 700-900 words right after I wake up, another 400-600 after lunch, then 500-1000 in the evening.

On the story side, I’m almost a pure discovery writer. I always know what to expect in the scene I’m writing now, the scene I’m writing next, and where the current ‘chunk’ fits in the overall arc of the book & series, but I’m also willing to let the story surprise me and take me in a different direction than I expected it to go. I’ve killed off characters and destroyed entire story arcs because an unexpected death fit the scene I was working on. And I’ve gone back and re-written 40,000+ word chunks because I had a better idea during editing. I find my discipline with daily output gives me the freedom to explore while also meeting deadlines – the best of both worlds, as it were.

Why so much magic? Did anyone tell you having so many magic systems was a bad idea? Did people think it was a good idea? Please tell me more about what your writing process for your magic was like.

Hah! Yes. This is one of the more common fights between me and my editor. Not that she doesn’t love the magic, she just wants to be sure I’ve fleshed each idea out enough and made it grokkable so it has the impact I want it to. (And incidentally, a light book 2 spoiler – let’s just say my editor and I have quite a bit more fighting to do about the number of new systems and powers introduced in the next volume in the trilogy!)

As for where the magic comes from – I write what fits the scene in my head. If it calls for a new magic system, I make one on the spot and polish it during revisions and editing. Very little to no planning beforehand; all the details, rules, powers, etc come about because a particular scene wants to showcase something new.

If you could only have one of your magic systems, which would it be?

No fair! I need them all to tell the story. And which one is my favorite depends on whichever scene I wrote last, most of the time. So right now, that would be a magic system you haven’t seen yet, from one of the epilogues in book 2… 🙂

All three magic systems were amazing, but I enjoyed Arak’Jur’s totem-esk magic the most. Do you have any magical beasts and powers that you rejected or removed from your novel because they didn’t work? If so, why?

Well thank you. I enjoyed writing those scenes immensely. Arak’Jur’s magic had almost no changes from the first draft, as far as how it worked mechanically. There was one power I gave him in an early scene that I cut and replaced with him using mareh’et instead, strictly to consolidate the number of powers and keep it grokkable. Otherwise it’s all as-originally-written.

One of the most interesting aspects of you magic was the effects of combining the various schools into new powers. Have you mapped out what all these combined effects will do already or are you playing it more by ear?

This was originally *much* more prevalent in the book, for Order magic (the leylines) especially. Originally every binding had different effects when paired with other bindings; at one point I’d mapped out a big matrix of combinations in a spreadsheet trying to keep them all straight. In the final draft though, we opted to streamline this and keep it much simpler – one of my editor’s better ideas, I think. She struggles to rein me in, and most of the time she succeeds, to the book’s benefit.

Where do we go next? The ending of your first novel was fantastic, but I don’t even know where we go next. What is the next stage/arc of your story (if you can share it)?

Again thank you! My goal for the series has always been to peel the onion one book at a time. In book one I introduce a core plot that’s mostly resolved by the end, with a metaplot revealed around the edges of the main story. Book two will fully reveal and resolve the metaplot from book one, but also reveal an even deeper layer, which will then be the focus of book three.

This was your first novel and a huge undertaking, What lessons have you learned from working on Soul of the World that you want to apply to writing book 2?

SOUL OF THE WORLD was my first attempt at writing creative fiction of any kind. I grew an enormous amount as a writer while writing & revising it – with full credit to my editor, my agent, the agency president, and all of my other advance readers (especially my wife!) for helping me get there. As a result, book two’s first draft was a much tighter manuscript than the first drafts of SOUL. I had to rewrite over a hundred thousand words of SOUL before it was ready to shop to potential agents; book two should hopefully see us spending more time on polish and less on fixing rookie mistakes. Otherwise, book two is already turned in and I’m currently waiting for first reactions from my editor. So let’s hope it goes smoothly from here!

In Soul of the World we saw that most of the action in the story is happening in the colonies, but that there is an entire second continent with it’s own countries and people. Since so much of your magic is tied to location, do you plan on visiting other lands in the story or focusing just on the current surroundings?

As the series progresses we’re going to travel a *lot*. Book two will take us west across the New World, across the sea to the Old World, even to undiscovered continents (plural!) that wouldn’t have appeared on any maps in book one. The story gets bigger in a hurry, though I still try to keep things focused on the characters as they respond to the challenges in front of them.

Are you a big reader of fantasy yourself? What are some of your favorite books? What is the last book that you read (of any genre) that you would recommend?

Very much so. Jacqueline Carey’s KUSHIEL’S DART is my favorite book of all time. I grew up devouring and re-devouring Robert Jordan’s WHEEL OF TIME series whenever a new book came out. I adore Robert E. Howard’s CONAN stories and other classic swords & sorcery stuff like Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock. N.K. Jemisin continues to amaze me with everything she writes. Additional plugs for Brandon Sanderson, Pat Rothfuss, Juliet Marillier, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Mary Robinette Kowal.

The last book I read was READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline. I loved the audiobook so much I went and bought a physical copy to read too. Can’t recommend it enough, both the audio version and the printed edition. Some of the most compelling storytelling I’ve consumed in years.

What in Soul of the World are you most proud of? Which character, magic, part of the world, or element were you most excited to share with other people?

This answer could change on any given day, but today I’ll say Sarine and Zi. I’ve been the lonely kid watching the world from a distance, and I would have given anything for a magical companion to share it with. These days I have my amazing wife & daughters, but I hope Sarine and Zi’s story connects with people and inspires them to want to be as creative and fearless as she is.

Thank you David for talking with me, and I am super pumped for book two. If you haven’t checked out Soul of the World yet, I implore you to go give it a shot!

Soul Of The World – A New Frontier Of Magic

June 29, 2017June 29, 2017 / QuillToLive / 5 Comments

This week I get to do one of my absolute favorite things, talk about a new dark horse on the 2017 release list. I love magic systems, and today’s book has not one, not two, but three original magical systems to sink your teeth into. Soul of the World is a debut novel by David Mealing that has taken me completely by surprise. I had heard almost nothing about this book until someone handed me an advanced copy, and I was blown away by how much I enjoyed it. As such, I am making it my miniature mission to shout to all of you how much fun it is because while you may not have heard of it, it is definitely worth checking out.

They say when you write your first book you should start small, which is apparently a saying that Mealing did not care about. Soul of the World is a huge epic fantasy and just the opening chapter of a complicated and interesting world. The book is set in a semi-alternate history American revolutionary war, except that the English and the French have switched places in the story. The book is initially very confusing with regards as to what is going on, but it is still a blast to read as you try to get your feet on solid ground. Our plot follows three protagonists, each a paragon of one of the three magic systems and a window into three different factions in our story. What is actually happening in the book is a bit of a spoiler, and a mystery I greatly enjoyed unraveling, so instead I am going to focus on the character and magic for this review. Strap in, it’s going to be much longer that usual but I promise you this is worth your time.

First, we have Sarine, a street artist living in the ghettos of the new world using her unique magical talents to survive and scrape out a living. I immediately fell in love with her as a lead and always looked forward to her chapters. Sarine’s magic revolves around a Kaas, a snake/basilisk-like familiar that allows her to manipulate the emotions of those around her. Usually I am not a fan of ‘mind control’ magic as it can make conflict resolution too easy, but Mealing’s take on the concept is much more up my alley. Sarine’s Kaas familiar can influence others, but only by broadcasting things like anger to incite riots, or emanating tranquility to calm a crowd. It is a much less precise form of emotional control than I have seen before – and Mealing uses it to create some interesting situations. Sarine is a solitary, and rather sad, character who spends most of her time talking with her familiar. Her sweet nature and strong moral code won my heart quickly and I enjoyed her story through the entire book.

Second we have Arak’Jur, a tribesman who functions as a Native American surrogate. Originally Arak’Jur was my least favorite lead, but by the end of the book he was easily my favorite. A large part of the book revolves around huge and dangerous magical beasts that roam the continent our characters inhabit. While the English/French live behind a giant magical barrier that keeps the beasts out, the natives have human guardians who protect their tribes by killing the beasts. When a beast is killed, the guardian may beseech the spirit of the animal to give them a boon if the animal was impressed with the guardian’s prowess. These boons allow the guardian to channel some aspect of the beast for a short period of time. I. Love. This. Magic. I cannot begin to express how invested I got in Arak’Jur’s story once I got to see how his magic worked. Mealing is incredibly inventive with his magical beasts, and every time I opened to one of Arak’Jur’s chapters I was bouncing in my chair with excitement to see the next creature that Mealing had made, and what new amazing power that Arak’Jur might get. My original problem with Arak’Jur was he seemed to be a cliche depiction of a Native American and I was going to lambast Mealing for not making him more complex. However, as I spent more time with this stoic and stubborn man I found his personality to be deeper than I originally gave him credit for, and I grew to be more attached to him than anyone else. He can feel like a stick in the mud sometimes, but if you stick with him he will blossom.

The third and final lead is Erris, and I ended up liking her the least despite her having probably the most original of all the magic systems. My problem with Erris was less with her as a character, and more with the fact that she is a high ranking officer in the French military and as a result her chapters highly revolve around military strategy. I am a fan of strategy and tactics, but I felt that a decent number of Erris’s passages could drag as they were bogged down by logistical minutia. However, her magic is called binding and is based on territorial control – which is awesome. Binders are born with access to a few of the many ley lines running throughout the world – and each country in the story has access to a number of leylines equal to the size of their territorial control. This creates this weird and awesome need to keep expanding the size of your country and made conflict constantly feel natural and inevitable. Binders can sense pockets of power around them that gather when the corresponding emotion or aspect is concentrated in that location. The easiest example of this is if a lot of people die someone, Death binders will find a pocket of ‘Death’ to fuel their magic. I am not doing this system enough justice with this paragraph, trust me it is cool.

On top of having just a ridiculous number (3) of magic systems, our characters gain an insane number of powers as the book progresses. In most fantasy novels I have read, you might have a protagonist find one or two new powers in a story and then spend the entire book contemplating how it changes their lives. I kept a counter next to me as I read Soul of the World, and by the halfway mark the protagonists had collectively gained over twenty new powers. If you had asked me what I thought of characters gaining that many new powers before reading this, I would have said I bet the story devolves into an incoherent mess. But, while Soul of the World certainly gets messy, it is a mess that is fun to roll around in that has a clear underlying cohesion that runs through it. Things get really exciting when characters start combining their powers, adding endless freshness to the combat, and when some characters start mixing the different magic systems I was clawing at the pages with unbridled joy.

While I have just given you a truck load of reasons to go out and buy this debut immediately, I would be remiss if I didn’t also do my job and talk about its flaws. The combat is thrilling, but the general prose of the book could definitely use some polish. As I was reading Soul of the World I could definitely tell that this was Mealing’s first book and some of his word choice, phrasing, and dialogue could be improved a little bit. However, this is very typical of a first novel in my experience and I am sure that as he continues to churn out more awesome books his authorial voice will only get better.

Soul of the World is a magical book, almost overflowing with originality. The few problems I had with the narrative were vastly outweighed by the fascinating world, fun characters, and captivating magic that pervade the story. I have no doubt that this book will be considered a hidden gem for the next few months, but I hope that with help from myself and others, enough people will pick this up to give it the attention it deserves. The Quill to Live definitely recommends you give David Mealing, and Soul of the World, a chance.

Rating: Soul of the World – 8.5/10

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