But then this is an unusual book in a number of different ways. The opening is, surely, how all fantasy novels should begin: not by parachuting the reader into the middle of a battle, or some gruesome moment intended purely to shock, but quietly, with the main character in her setting, then adding in the mysterious background, some magic and a threat, to draw you in. It’s character-driven fantasy at its best. It’s intelligent, thought-provoking and well written. You can see why they might have had a problem with it, because it’s very different from the average. The manuscript spent an unbelievable ten years – I’ll say that again, TEN years! – languishing with a single publisher before the author withdrew it in disgust and self-published.
This was the first I came across that made me say: wow, that was amazing! I’ve since gone on to read many more of the author’s works, and I highly recommend her for excellent reading that will shatter all your preconceived ideas of fantasy.įor those who say all self-published works are dross – this book is a stunning counter example. There was a huge amount of dross, as is inevitable in a system with no quality control whatsoever, a lot that could have been better with a bit of polishing, and a few that just blew me away.
The quality was variable, to put it mildly. Back in those early days of the Kindle, a lot of previously unpublished authors were dusting off long-abandoned manuscripts, kept in a drawer for years, maybe, and tossing them up on Amazon without much thought. I first read this in December 2011, when I was only just discovering self-published books, and finding most of them to be a bit ho-hum.
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