With a title like Age of Myth Book One of The Legends of the First Empire you expect a lot of set up as the author builds a fantasy world with plenty of action, good guys vs. bad and maybe some decadence lurking in the bushes.  What makes Age of Myth so good is that it stands on its own, no cliff hangers, and the story is set in a small geographical area and over a month or two.  Sullivan built his world and his characters to tell a story – and they do.

Michael J. Sullivan delivers the action and good/bad guys, lots of intriguing back story and he does it all intertwined with the set up for a series such that you don’t feel the entire novel was a pilot for a new series.  The book reads fast; we get to know six or seven characters; there are hints of a great back story and best of all, there are several plots all moving together.

So often the first-book-in-a-series is half set up and the story and characters are sketches.  Age of Myth is well done and I’m looking forward to the continuing saga.

Plots

The blurb talks about Raithe who killed a “god”, in actuality a Fhrey, a race of long-lived, highly cultured people.  The killing does kick off some of the action as it sets up confrontation between Fhrey and the contemptible Rhune (humans), but it is only part of the story.  The Fhrey are divided internally with the magic-wielding Miralyith feeling superior to – in fact as gods – the ordinary Fhrey who cannot work magic.  The other Fhrey left the Instarya clan out in the wilderness to guard against the humans and buffer the pampered city dwellers.  Naturally the Instarya feel oppressed and are not happy with this division and their low status.

On the human side Raithe doesn’t actually do much.  He arrives at Dahl Rhen, a more civilized human town than he is used to, where he meets Persephone who carries the other main plot thread.  Persephone is the widow of the former chieftain and although she herself is unaware of it, the new chieftain and his wife are afraid of her influence and try to kill her.

Along the way we have other bands of Fhrey who appear and are willing to align with the humans, we have the naive Miralyith Fhrey Arion, a young lady seer Suri, a demon-possessed wolf and more.  The plots are complex but easy enough to follow, especially as Sullivan doesn’t tip his hand.  We suspect there’s more going on with the new chieftain but we don’t actually see it until Persephone does.

All these plots are foundations for future stories with enough content and strands for several novels.

People and World Building

Sullivan’s characters are people in their own right.  His female leads are especially well drawn; they aren’t your stereotype fighters nor shifty prostitutes or thieves.  Instead they are realistic people doing things that make sense for their culture.

We ride along with Arion as she first sees first hand how the Instarya fear and resent the Miralyith.  She doesn’t like it and much of her story deals with her growing awareness of the inter-Fhrey tensions and her dismay at recognizing she herself may need to get involved.  I wasn’t fond of Arion although I can see she will be pivotal in the future.

Persephone slowly learns just how much the new chieftain and his coterie hate her and how much in danger she is.  She is loyal first to her people, the townsfolk of Dahl Rhen, then to her friends and those she sees as helping her people.  She is careful to not draw the town’s attention to herself at first but the chieftain doesn’t know what to do and won’t take her softly voiced suggestions.  Persephone learns how strong she is only as the story progresses.  She was my favorite character.

Suri is the young seer who plays a magic-helper role plus is an interesting character in her own right.  Suri intuitively knows what dangers threaten and counsels Persephone to escape murderous clansmen and an enormous possessed bear.

Raithe, who initiates the Rhune/Fhrey war, plays a minor role.  He gets in the middle of things almost by accident.  Nyphron, the Instaryon Fhrey, is Raithe’s counterpart.

Sullivan built a world that feels real.  We can almost smell the woods and our stomachs are growling as Raithe and Malcolm run for their lives.  We can see the dirt and grungy towns that the Rhunes live in compare to the splendor of even the remote Instaryon fortress.  Sullivan doesn’t harp on the decadence the Miralyith develop nor the growing despair the non-magic Fhrey feel, but it’s there like a bit of a bad smell. I expect he’ll build on that split in future novels as it offers so many story line opportunities.

Summary

I enjoyed Theft of Swords, Sullivan’s first book of the Riyria Revelations but wasn’t as fond of the rest of the Revelation series or the prequel novels, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Age of Myth is excellent, well constructed, written carefully to give enough back story and world building to entice us but not tell all.

If you like solid fantasy novels written for adults with little or no romance, no sparkling vampires, plenty of action and a world so well built you can feel the dirt on the floor, this is for you.

I received this from Net Galley for free in expectation of an honest review.

4+ Stars

Seven Forges by James A. Moore is set up for an ongoing series, with the author showing us two cultures so different that one will be an existential threat to the other, and cast of traditional characters for this sword and sorcery fantasy novel.

Plot

Seven Forges starts with a bang.  Merros Dulver, retired from the Emperor’s army, leads an expedition to the freezing Blasted Lands, looking for any traces of the people who once inhabited the area before it was devastated by a mage war.  He and his band are fighting for their lives against Pra-Moresh, huge predators of the icy waste, when Drask, from the Sa’ba Taalor people, intervenes and kills the remaining monsters.

The plot thins after this, with isolated incidents that don’t flow together and no overarching conflict in the story telling sense.  The author sets up a major conflict that kicks off at the end of the novel, but dribbles out little fights that don’t tie together before that.

The expedition travels first to Drask’s land of the Seven Forges, then takes Drask and about 40 others of the Sa’ba Taalor back to the capital of the Empire to meet Emperor Pathra.  This begins the completely misunderstood engagement between the two peoples that is doomed to end in war.

Unfortunately the book falls flat at the point where Dulver and crew reach the Seven Forges.  Drask tells them that each Sa’ba Taalor does everything for themselves – crafts their own weapons, grows their own food, fights their own battles – and gives evidence that each adult is extremely capable with weapons and that every dispute is solved with combat.  The Sa’ba Taalor have gods that direct their actions and requires each to be self-sufficient.  Somehow Dulver doesn’t catch what this means.

The emperor, his wizard advisor Desh and Dulver all see the Sa’ba Taalor visitors as an embassy, a meeting designed to bring long term trade and good will.  They don’t realize that a people who sees everything as directed by their gods and to be resolved via violence will see the Empire as soft, as incapable, as undeserving.

The emperor agrees to let 10 of the Sa’ba Taalor go to Roathes, the southern country in the empire that is being invaded slowly by the neighboring Guntha.  The emperor believes the Sa’ba Taalor are there to scout the problem, confirm the situation.  The Sa’ba Taalor are there to “take care of the problem”, which in their lexicon means kill every Guntha on the shore.  Which they do.

At this point the wizard and Dulver wise up and realize they do not have compatible goals or understanding, that the Sa’ba Taalor do not value what the empire values.  And both get a bit suspicious and worried about their intentions.

Backstory and World Building

When I read fantasy novels I look for engaging characters, interesting backstory with tantalizing glimpses of what might be there, fun and fast moving plots, reasonable world building.  Seven Forges by James Moore has a good backstory but it falls flat.

First the idea that everyone is self-sufficient for food, for defense, for weapons crafting is intriguing but I kept wondering just how far that self-sufficiency extended.  Did each person mine their own ore and smelt it?  Did each one build their own house, weave their own cloth, tan their own leather?  We could see some cooperation among the Sa’ba Taalor who traveled to the empire, but where did they draw the line?

The fact that every one who wants something builds it themselves, yet that every dispute and every issue is solved by physical combat seems paradoxical.  In our world when violence is the only rule the weak are impoverished and we end up with warlords or gang leaders.

The Sa’ba Taalor demanded that the empire’s assigned ambassador, Andover, demonstrate his martial competence and stated that the Sa’ba Taalor would only respect him – and by extension everyone else – if he could hold his own with weapons.  The empire valued other things – the rule of law, the ability to solve problems with words and trade, commerce, art and music.   The Sa’ba Taalor see no reason to demonstrate their skills in the empire’s valued abilities, in fact it never seems to occur to anyone to show reciprocity.

Characters

The characters likewise lost their interest about a third of the way through.  I liked Desh the wizard and the emperor Pathra and Dulver was OK if two-dimensional.  The Sa’ba Taalor were boring.  You could substitute any generic bad guy/violent culture; the extreme self-sufficiency was the only novel point and as mentioned it didn’t make a lot of sense.

The character I like least is Andover whom the emperor appoints as ambassador to the Sa’ba Taalor.  This makes no sense.  Andover is nearly illiterate, about 18, unskilled, young, dumb, venal and gullible. Most emperors would appoint someone who knows something about the empire or its trade and can represent the emperor’s wishes.  The Sa’ba Taalor tell the emperor that their gods have chosen Andover, but why and why should that matter for something as important as the first ambassador to a neighbor.

Summary

Author Moore must have meant this as the set up for a series as we finally get to the real conflict between Sa’ba Taalor and Empire only at the end of the book and the whole thing feels like a set up.   Unfortunately Moore takes almost 400 pages to set up his world and the eventual conflict and after slogging through that much I really don’t much care.

3 Stars

(Amazon shows there are at least four books in the series now.)