MY ⭐️ RATING: 4.25/5
Format: Kindle eBook
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Arthur’s Bane is the first episode in The Broken Kingdom, the first novel in the Wormkind Chronicles, which is an epic fantasy series about the legendary British hero Arthur.
The story ranges across a version of post-Roman Britain in which the various British Kingdoms are almost constantly at war with each other. Meanwhile, desperate Saxon refugees are flooding into Britain from across the seas, driven from their homes by rising sea levels, and worse, the mighty dragon Cythraul, the epitome of evil, has been awoken from its long slumbers and threatens to extinguish all human life … The Wormkind Chronicles will be delivered in episodic form, with a new episode dropping every few months. The first novel The Broken Kingdom will contain four or five episodes, each of about 20,000 words, or 70 pages. The Wormkind Chronicles is expected to be a trilogy.
MY REVIEW
I really enjoyed Donald’s, The Last Berserker from his historical fiction Fireborn series, when I read it last year, so I was very excited to see that he was bringing his talents into the fantasy realm with a story about the legend of King Arthur! Having a basis and a setting on what to use for the story makes this easy to setup, but Angus does a good job of weaving in his own tale to the story with recognizable names like Galahad, Gawain, Bedevere, and many more. On top of that, yes it is fantasy, so there are dragons! Dragon-like creatures and MAGIC! Clearly have to have magic if you also have the Wizard, Merlin!
With Donald being a historical fiction writer of this type of era, he’s already very in tune with the authenticity of what is involved and throughout the story, you can clearly see that research and past books has helped him create such a familiar realistic feel. There is also a good bit of fighting which made this fly by even more, because the fights felt so real by including just how dark they can be. I did like the characters since there was already a since of knowing them based on what I’ve known previously, but since this was only 70 pages, there was some meat left off the bone that made me a little sad knowing I’m gonna have to wait to see what happens next in the story.
The most interesting thing about all of this, is something very unique, the series is being written as an independent author and as episodes while he works on other planned books from his current publisher. Each book will contain 5 separate episodes, which are essentially novellas, and once all the episodes are published, will be published as an entire book, before moving to book 2 and doing the same thing. If you’re into the legend of King Arthur and are willing to wait as the episodes get dropped here and there, this could end up being a fantastic book and series! I mean come on, King Arthur, Magic, dragons… need I say any more?!?
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