2/5 stars
Synopsis
Warning! This section contains spoilers, if you would like to avoid these spoilers, jump to the review below.
The book started with the main character, Jacob, standing on a mountain, surrounded by bodies, with no memory. Slowly, he regained his memory, and realized that he was an undead wraith. There was a random person standing next to him, and he realized that the person was the spirit of the King Below. He had been a slave to the King Below for two centuries. He was horrified by this. The King Below told the main character that he could take the King Below’s place, but the main character refused. He saw two dragons a bit later. The riders on a blue dragon were trying to kill the rider on a brown dragon.
Jacob saved her, then talked with her, learning what had happened since he had been killed.
They traveled to a city so the woman could start her plan for overthrowing the current leader of the country in her quest for vengeance by inciting a rebellion. However, the city was already under attack. Jacob joined in the fight to protect the city. He fought against the Empress’s champion and killed him.
There was a disagreement between the characters, and it ended up in a bloodbath.
Jacob and his two companions traveled to the King Below’s tower via a magic mirror in order to gain power and knowledge. The main character also had a hope of seizing the power so he could never be the King Below’s slave again. And hopefully get a mortal body.
The three characters shared backstories.
Three people Jacob knew from when he was under the King Below’s control found them and begged for their aid. They agreed. And then Jacob started having romantic feelings toward his two companions.
The entire group went into the tower, and they needed to confront the race that had seized the tower. Jacob and the two women with him fought the thing that was controlling the race that had invaded the tower. Jacob regained all of his memories after defeating the thing controlling the creatures in the tower. His two companions saw his memories too somehow and realized that they had been lied to about history their entire lives. Then the two women started talking to each other about when they started loving each other, and kissing.
Jacob then claimed the crown and throne of the King Below. After he did that, he realized the tower was under attack and saw a legendary monster attacking it. Jacob realized that the legendary monster was just a distraction, and ran back to the crown. There, he saw his lover from when he was still alive. She had been resurrected nearly the same way as him, but by a different god.
His former lover had merged with the other god, and she and Jacob started fighting.
Jacob was being beaten by his former lover, and he then made the choice to put the crown on and merge with the King Below. This made him into the new King Below.
He banished his former lover, then accepted vows of fealty from people around him, then declared his love for the two women with him.
Review
This book had an interesting idea. But I feel like it was executed poorly. The plot was very confusing. The main character decided to throw his lot in with someone he had just barely met, almost immediately declaring his loyalty to her for no apparent reason. I didn’t feel like he had a clear goal in mind. The book seemed to shift from one plot thread to the next. One moment the main character was trying to complete one task, but then he moved onto another task without completing his first one. The author could probably take those micro tasks and expand each one into its own story. At least then, the reader wouldn’t be confused about what the book was about. I feel like the book needs an editor who will clean up the plot lines.
I felt like the character development was fairly well done, if I overlook the fact that the main character didn’t really have a goal of his own. The beginning of the book presented the main character as someone who was mysterious, and I wanted to find out more about him. Further along in the book, the main character really struggled with himself, with whether or not he was evil. He took comfort in the fact that he had never harmed innocents, but as he slowly recovered his memories, he realized that he had in fact harmed innocents, and he struggled with feelings of self-loathing. He had to rise above those feelings in order to defeat the evil in front of him. The other characters were not as well developed.
I feel like the “evil guy is actually good and the good guy is really the bad guy” theme in books has been overdone lately, but this author did it fairly well.
About 3/4 of the way through the book, the characters engaged in pages worth of backstory. They just started telling each other about their lives. I feel like that’s a bad time to put that type of thing in a book. It’s better to put backstory of characters in the beginning, or sprinkled throughout the book. In the beginning, so the reader gets to know the characters, or sprinkled throughout so the reader is curious and wants to know more. I don’t feel like putting character backstory in the end of the book is a good strategy for authors.
The ending of the book was really weird. I didn’t feel like the main character really tried to develop a romantic relationship through the book, but at the end of it he was declaring his love for one of his companions. The book didn’t really have any buildup to that, so it just felt forced. The book ended with the implication that the main character and the two women he was with formed a threesome romantically. Which was not at all how I thought this book was going to end. I felt like the book was confused about what type of book it was supposed to be.
Fireheart Books 