Title Ought to be Dead
Author Scott Warren
Genre fantasy
Topics revenge, purpose
Lenght 250p
Publication info February 18, 2022
by BooksGoSocial
Rating ★★★★✰ (4 of 5)
"You really ought to be dead for this sort of work."
We witness the birth of our unconventional hero in a shack towards North, were the village is the last stronghold to something sinister coming from the wilderness. Here the necromancer Dierdrana gets woken up in the middle of the night by a company of sailors that need to catch the morning's tide, and to do so they need to bring back to life the dock inspector that suddenly died while carrying on with his duties. This is not an unusual request – for whatever amount of time the job needs to be done (for short or for longer), the dead can walk on Earth again. It's up to the single villages how much trust and rights they want to give them.
What is unusual is that the necromancer can't do anything but bring to life the soul of an unknown person who died for the same kind of wound, and doesn't remember much apart for his hate towards what killed him in the first place – monsters. From here we follow the hero and his bookworm assistant in many quests, some out of bare survival and some towards an enemy that is loose in the world and will bring the ultimate challenge.
The book stays in the major topics of the epic fantasy genre for the way the hero is faced with various quests to clean the world from evil, while being on a quest himself. It has some reminiscence of The Witcher Saga and Game of Thrones, but it's not derivative and brings a lot of fresh perspective to the genre. The world the author manage to create offers a peek at something that I genuinely hope will evolve in a series, despite his description as stand-alone. I don't think I could ever get enough of the lore old and new the author infuses his world with, and it has a lot of potential for something more. Not that the book itself it's not satisfying enough – it has action, depth, sentiment, wit in its vision of the world, and it has a powerful ending that perfectly fits with the atmosphere and the refined and technical language the book is written in, still resulting both approachable and smooth. I guess it's just me being greedy after enjoying it so much.
This book is perfect for a quick read without suffering for the lack of plot, action or myths intertwined with the complexion of human nature, and it's an original addition to a genre that has been already largely experimented with.
What is unusual is that the necromancer can't do anything but bring to life the soul of an unknown person who died for the same kind of wound, and doesn't remember much apart for his hate towards what killed him in the first place – monsters. From here we follow the hero and his bookworm assistant in many quests, some out of bare survival and some towards an enemy that is loose in the world and will bring the ultimate challenge.
The book stays in the major topics of the epic fantasy genre for the way the hero is faced with various quests to clean the world from evil, while being on a quest himself. It has some reminiscence of The Witcher Saga and Game of Thrones, but it's not derivative and brings a lot of fresh perspective to the genre. The world the author manage to create offers a peek at something that I genuinely hope will evolve in a series, despite his description as stand-alone. I don't think I could ever get enough of the lore old and new the author infuses his world with, and it has a lot of potential for something more. Not that the book itself it's not satisfying enough – it has action, depth, sentiment, wit in its vision of the world, and it has a powerful ending that perfectly fits with the atmosphere and the refined and technical language the book is written in, still resulting both approachable and smooth. I guess it's just me being greedy after enjoying it so much.
This book is perfect for a quick read without suffering for the lack of plot, action or myths intertwined with the complexion of human nature, and it's an original addition to a genre that has been already largely experimented with.
Still, whatever he had been before had little bearing on what he was now. But his life, unlife rather, wasn’t bad by most counts if you disregarded the occasional mauling. It stayed peaceful, aside from the monsters. Even most of them were just hungry or territorial, or in heat. Not evil. Men and their problems mostly stayed out of his path. Best of all, most days were nothing but an open sky above and an endless road ahead. At his core, Specter needed to wander. He couldn’t abide being someone who stayed in one place, doing the same old thing day after day like, well, like Dierdrana’s gardener.
Author's Contacts
Comments
Post a Comment