Tom Lloyd (1) (1979–)

A copy of Fear the Reaper was received from the author in a giveaway.


An angel walks into a beleaguered inn and walks out with the bartender Shell. Having been strong armed into hunting down a demon of death, four unlikely companions (and I do mean unlikely) begin a quest packed with all the exhilaration of a Blizzard video game cutscene.


A full on angel with a flaming sword enters town and nobody bats an eye. The grim seriousness of heavenly characters colliding with the detached snark of show more jaded peasants is a juxtaposition that works incredibly well. These little interactions bring a great deal of life to distinct characters who deserve far more space than a novella affords. Their journeys are satisfying and complete, but it's a good sign to be left yearning for more.


There's also an abundance of heavenly magics, gloom and wit, Fear the Reaper is a little novella with a big adventure fit snug inside its pages. Would definitely recommend. show less

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Stranger of Tempest
Series: The God Fragments #1
Author: Tom Lloyd
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 481
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Lynx fought in the war. But when his leader's charisma show more wasn't enough to overcome his children's greed, the war machine imploded and now any soldier who fought on the leader's side is looked down upon and distrusted by all the surrounding countries. Lynx just wants to retire but without money, he can't do that.

So he hires on with a mercenary group, the Cards. In the process of going to an assignment, Lynx rescues a fellow countryman, a young girl who is a mage, from the clutches of one of the religious orders. The current assignment puts them into direct conflict with said religious order, so the Cards are doubly screwed.

Then their contact publicly kills their mark and forces the group to use their most powerful mage bullets to escape the city. The whole Militia of the Order is now after them and the only way to escape is to go underground through Duegar ruins, which are filled with traps and other such creepy crawlies as has driven men mad. Quadruply screwed.

In the process of fleeing through the underground ruins, they run into the local scary things, then they run into the Order and then everbody runs into The Big Bad Thing. Yeah, that thing on the cover. It eats magic. 7 times screwed over.

The Cards barely survive, make it out and deliver their contact to an out of the way town. She is involved in some nasty politics and after having seen how they conduct themselves, wants to hire the Cards on her master's behalf without them knowing it. Welcome to the new war boys and girls!

Totally Screwed.

My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this. The thing I enjoyed most was the magical bullets that the specially built mage-guns could shoot. With names like “icers”, “sparkers”, “burners”, “earthers”, it reminded me exactly of the Moranth munitions from the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. I love those munitions and the kinds of guys who use them, These god fragment bullets (hence the name of the series) had the same vibe as the moranth and I loved every second of it.

The second thing I really enjoyed was the balance of worldbuilding and character information with the action. I found that tightrope walked perfectly. I was fed just enough info to keep me satisfied without feeling like Lloyd was info-dumping on me. The action was pretty good too. Mages, magic, mercenaries and whole lot of super creepy, underground, scary creatures that want to, and can, eat you whole. That balrog looking thing on the cover (I've included a larger picture you can click if you so desire) is the main “boss” creature but there are plenty of other things too. It's all good.

Thirdly, I liked the characters. Lynx is a great main character. The older I get, the more life experience I have, the more I want the characters I read about to keep pace with me. Lynx is a scarred and broken man and seeing him struggle is encouraging. He can keep on and he hasn't given up hope. He's not expecting rainbows and unicorns, but just waking up in the morning to some hot coffee is an anchor point. The rest of the Cards have real potential. One or two of them are already traitors and I suspect their storyline will end in the next book. Hopefully with some appropriately vicious and brutal ending.

Finally, the Cards. This whole card scheme once again reminded me of the Malazan Master of the Deck and the Houses and Aspects. You have your suites and then your cards within the suite. So you have the Stranger card. It is in the Tempest suite. Hence the title of the book. In many ways Lloyd got some really cool things without all the existential drama so prevalent in the Malazan books. I LIKE that.

The reason I gave this 4 Stars instead of 5 Stars is because of the following two things. First, the profanity. These guys are hardened mercenaries and talk as such. It's not something I want to overlook though and anyone going into it should be aware. It crossed my radar enough that it became an issue. Second, for whatever reason, when the whole group moved from the town to the underground scene (roughly 40'sh percent of the book), I just didn't feel the tension the same way. The circumstances were worse, but I never felt like the group as whole was in danger like I did when they were escaping the town and the Religious Order earlier. I can't put my finger on why exactly and it really makes no sense, but I was able to pin it down to that point.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this read. It gave me all the magical fantasy adventure I wanted and was a good standalone story but with the rest of the series taking shape in the background. A lot of potential without overwhelming me with details I didn't need for this story. Added my “Favorite” tag to this one!

★★★★☆ show less

I'm not generally in the habit of reading short story collections, though it wouldn't be accurate to say I'm not a fan of them either. It's just that given a choice between an anthology or a full-length novel, I would most likely end up picking the latter because they tend to better satisfy my appetite for more in-depth character development and world-building. Not that I don't think a short story is incapable of achieving this at all, but it does take a talented author to make me connect to show more their characters and world the same way in so few pages. After reading The God Tattoo though, I'm happy to report that Tom Lloyd is one of them.

Of course, this collection of "untold tales from the Twilight Reign" also has the added benefit of taking place in a fantasy universe already established in a series of five books. According to the introduction, reading the main Twilight Reign series is not a prerequisite before tackling The God Tattoo, which is good because I'm a newcomer to this world myself. I have to say not being familiar with any of the locations or characters (apparently, not many of the major ones appear here anyway) did not hinder my enjoyment one bit; if anything I'm even more impressed with the sheer scope and epic quality of the world of Twilight Reign.

As the author himself has written, his series was never intended to be about one person or even a group of people; the history and population of an entire land are affected by the events, and the eleven stories presented here give a pretty good idea of what that means. There's a nice variety, from tales of mystery like A Beast in Velvet and The Marshall's Reflection, to some that are disturbingly magical, carrying a hint of that dark fairy tale flavor (examples like The God Tattoo, A Man Collecting Spirits, and Afraid of the Dark come immediately to mind).

This collection does a good job of fleshing out the world, showing how the people are an inextricable part of its history. The way some of these stories are connected merely serves to emphasize this point, featuring characters that shape events outside their own story and vice versa. As such, this anthology seems to flow better than most. Seen in context together, all eleven tales paint a very intriguing picture of Twilight Reign, with what I felt was a strong touch of horror to give the series that haunted, shadowy feel. It definitely sets the kind of tone I like to look for in my dark and epic fantasy.

Bottom line, I think this would be a great choice for avid readers of short stories and anthologies. That doesn't describe me at all, but even so, I found myself enjoying this book a lot. Though Tom Lloyd did say that this collection is not required reading for fans of the Twilight Reign novels, I can't think of any reason why any fan wouldn't want to pick this one up as well; if you're familiar with the world already, the stories here will probably resonate more. And if you're a new reader of his work, The God Tattoo might be inspiration to add The Stormcaller to your reading list. I personally added it because I got a taste of the series and Tom Lloyd's writing from these short stories, found that I liked what I saw, and now I'm interested in the full-length novels. show less

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, Librarything & Bookype by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: God of Night
Series: God Fragments #4
Author: Tom Lloyd
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 421
Words: 145.5K

Synopsis:

When the Cards released the seals on Magic, not only did more magic show more enter the world, thus stirring up all the creatures that used and fed on magic, and not only did it make mages more powerful, but it also had the side effect of making the god fragments even more powerful. One of the Militant Orders has figured out that if they can bring enough god fragments of their particular deity together, it might just resurrect it. And with a resurrected god on their side, they'll rule the Riven Kingdoms as undisputed masters.

Does anyone think the Cards are just going to sit back and let this happen? Of course not. When they discover that one of their mages of Tempest has the ability to destroy god fragments merely by touching them, they hatch a plan, a daring plan to capture as many of the god fragments as possible and destroy them. Doesn't matter that most god fragments are housed in the Militant Orders most secure locations, nothing is going to stop the Cards.

Using double and triple dealing, backstabbing, betrayals and general kick assery, the Cards manage to destroy the majority of fragments from 3 of the 4 Orders. The last Order is the most powerful however, and it's cache of fragments is located in a duegar stronghold underground and is currently being overrun by magical underground creatures.

Once they've gotten into the Stronghold, the Cards find out that the gods were using a chained creature of magic to siphon power from. Now that the gods fragments are being destroyed and the magic has been released back into the world, this elder god is awakening. The Cards must therefore defeat the final god fragments, which are reassembling into its god AND defeat a creature so powerful that it made gods from mere duegar hundreds of millennia ago.

Tons of people die, the Cards succeed and Lynx is elected the new leader of the Cards because Anatol was one of the people killed. There are still god fragments in the world and the warlord of his people is still alive, so Lynx figures their new mission will be to invade So-Han and kill the warlord. Thus the book and the series ends.

My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this but by the end, with some realizations, was glad this was the end of the series.

The fights were awesome. Realizing what the Militant Orders were up to was even awesomer. Finding out there was an elder god involved and that the Cards were going to kill it was the awesomest of all! The final massive battle in the Duegar ruins between the Cards, the remaining Militant Order personnel, the magic monsters and the elder god was everything I could have asked for. Magic galore, flintlock fantasy bullets and grenades by the metric ton and a monster so huge and gruesome that it made the monster from the first book look like a teddy bear? How could I not like everything about that? Even the ending was good. Lots of the Cards die. Important Cards die, like Anatole. Lynx becoming the new Master of the Deck slotted in perfectly with the series.

Unfortunately, and this is ALL me, was that I was used to the god fragment bullets and the grenades and bombs, etc. They didn't have the same impact on my as they did in the first book. I also realized, after finishing reading, that Lloyd had worked in some homosexual characters without playing it on a trumpet. I suspect if I were to go back and re-read the other books, I'd be finding more understated circumstances like this. Hence why I'll be done with Lloyd from here on out.

In regards to the series overall, I really enjoyed my time reading each book and short story and thought it was about 100 times better than Lloyd's Twilight Reign series. I'd recommend this wholeheartedly if mercenaries using dead god bodies to power their flintlock guns sounds like your kind of thing.

★★★★☆ show less