This is a nice, detailed review of ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT Book One, A THRONE OF BONES. 854 pages and free on Kindle Unlimited.
This is great a fantasy book and a insanely promising start to the series.
- Great set of characters and their development. Unlike ASOIAF saga, there is no boring point of view in the book, and all the main characters are interesting and different between them. Very glad also that honorable characters are not stupid, and the “bad” ones have interesting motivations and aren’t just doing evil things so the good guys can fight them. My favorite is Marcus.
- Attention to detail. This creates interesting, logic and spontaneous situation development. Unlike other books where it seems the author is cheating every time to move the pieces at his will, Vox moves pieces, but it seems he limits himself with some set of rules based on rational causes and effects, and this makes the narration more natural. It’s clear Vox is very knowledgeable about:
- War strategy and tactics. No insta teleporting troops, or building entire navies like in GoT show. This creates interesting progression and great battle narration.
- High Fantasy conventions and role playing games. It’s great to see interesting mages lore, and spells. Very important to give authenticity to the world.
- Female psychology. The female characters are very interesting, especially Severa being her very enigmatic and humane at the same time, and not femme fatale, psycho, mother or strong woman boring templates.
- World building. The setting is fascinating. From the more realist aspects like the roman empire-like territory, to the supernatural characters and lore. This last thing is obviously only teased, but can’t wait to read more about it.
- Non-materialist human perspective. Shit happens in the book and people make bad actions, but most of them (not all) are not only moved by money, lust and power, and have religious convictions. I find this refreshing in a world full of nihilist fiction, despite some of it being very good, like the Abercrombie saga. Here the violence flows naturally although brutally, it has reason to appear more than shock value. No more rapes or tortures every 20 pages for the sake of it, like in Rape Rape Martin books.
- Some powerful crafted scenes. And not only flashy and with shock value, but with real emotional power. Very good rhythm despite the amount of pages without neglect attention to detail.
I can’t recommend this book enough for Fantasy fans or people who wants a good novel. I’m going to start the continuation ASAP.