A. J. Dalton

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy, thanks!
What a truly amazing book! The characters are incredibly well defined, while at the same time leaving enough to the reader's imagination to create their own stories around them - my favourite is Freda, and her first scene is one of the few pieces of writing that has really touched me deeply in many years.
I love books that make me think, at the same time as entertaining me, and this story is certainly that. Free will, gods, consciousness, show more taking control of your life, being different, following your dreams and what you think is right, growing up and independence,... this book has got all that and more. And then of course, the amazing humour and battle scenes that the author has given us in the past.
I can't wait for the other trilogy books! show less

A J Dalton has surpassed himself and wrote an even better book than the first volume of the Flesh and Bone trilogy. I really loved this one.
The story was bigger, the theme more intense and the characters more vivid, and I really felt I was there, in the field, palace or roads, with all of them. It's almost not "just a story", because it made me think of so many general aspects of 'life' - an action, sentence or character intervention would set me off... I guess that's what being show more metaphysical fantasy means :) show less

A.J. Dalton continues to get better and better! I'm lucky enough to have read an advanced copy, as I couldn't wait to know about Jillan's story - I'm not a very patient person :)
I love the way the characters develop, the 'goodies' who can act really crap, the 'baddies' who suddenly are able to help; new and old gods that change all your initial assumptions... and of course I loved meeting Freda again, my absolute favourite, and laugh out loud with Torpeth :)

This first novel (first published, first in a trilogy) is thoroughly enjoyable. It is packed full of humourous exchanges and situations without compromising the suspense and action. The first half of the book sets up characters and beliefs before Dalton ramps up the action and challenges the characters bringing together unlikely alliances and turning the characters' worlds on their heads.

As we went through this book I had multiple ideas of where it was going to end and where the next books show more would be going. Each of them was shattered in turn so, I'm looking forward to books two and three - if only to see how on earth Dalton can top the near destruction of reality.

The only small thing which leads me to think it should be slightly less than I've given it is the number of typos in there. Staggering numbers of spelling mistakes and missing spaces kept leaping off the page. But that is a personal thing. show less