Bob @ Beauty in Ruins
PLEASE NOTE: I'm rarely active here anymore, but please feel free to follow me on Goodreads, where I post regularly.
These are the chronicles of a book addict, a photo junkie, and an aspiring author, rewriting the very fabric of reality one page (and one snapshot) at a time. From the strange to the unusual; the abandoned to the abnormal; the haunted to the historic; the supernatural to the surreal; the forests of dark fantasy, the cemeteries of gothic horror, and the post-apocalyptic ruins of science fiction are the landscapes of my imagination.
Currently reading
#SPFBO Review: Bloodrush
As much as I liked the setting ofBloodrush, with a faerie-infused old west frontier, I have a really hard time finding anything new or engaging in coming-of-age tales. To Ben Galley's credit, there's enough violence, gore, and profanity here to counter the YA feel, but we're still talking about a story that's centered around a moody, obnoxious 13-year old kid who is just as often wise-beyond-his-years as he is suitably-foolish.
Tonmerion (Merion) Hark is the son of the murdered Prime Lord Hark, forced west across the Iron Ocean to the very brink of civilization in Fell Falls, Wyoming. Far from home and denied the luxuries of a life of prestige, he's also far from friends and family - with a 12-inch faerie named Rhin as his only company.
What we have here is an imaginative alternate history novel wrapped in the trappings of both the western and fantasy genres. Galley makes good use of that genre clash, inventing a system of blood magic that's rather intense, and offering us monsters like the railwraiths. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to overcome the weaknesses of Merion as a protagonist. In addition, the narrative was often awkward and uneven, with an annoying habit of changing POVs within a scene.
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