Farlander

Dark, beautiful, ugly, gorgeous and honest. This book gleefully reeled me in with vivid characters and then joyfully stomped my heart into itty, bitty, teeny, tiny pieces in such an achingly wonderful way. It is a harsh look at life, power, corruption, consequence, and the surprising diamonds found in the refuse. What a wonderful, emotional roller coaster. More. More! MORE!

Given that this is a debut novel, it is perhaps forgivable that I hadn't heard of Col Buchanan before I read this book. But I'm glad that I have now. Farlander is a fantastic novel, with an incredible storyline, and a completely unexpected twist that, well, was quite a surprise...

The story starts quickly, in media res, and while the pace varies for the situation, the book never seems rushed, and never too slow. Somehow Buchanan always manages to get it right, and always keeps the plot flow interesting.

Uniquely, in my reading experience, there was one particular scene that stood out in memory, where Buchanan wrote an explanation for the immoral behaviour of "the bad guys", and constantly questions the morality of "the good guys", show more although he does explain their reasons too. Despite this, there is still the classic good and evil characterisations, but here it seems a deeper, more realistic blur of morality and conscience.

As with any good author, Buchanan writes several characters well, and even characters that appear for only a page or two can appear quite rounded. But the best characters were the Rōshun. Every one of them (Including the apprentices and a not-really Rōshun called Che) were well-written and extremely enjoyable to read.

In fact, there were only two problems with the book that I encountered, and they are minor. The first is that there was one storyline, that of Bahn, the General's advisor, didn't seem to make a lot of difference to the story, although it was interesting. Given that this is just the first book in the series however, it will be interesting to see where this leads. The other problem was the use of the ō character in the word Rōshun, but that's mainly because it meant I had to figure out how to write it in notepad for this review.

In summary, this book was incredible. Buchanan has the potential to become a popular author, and I hope that the publisher, Tor Books, helps him achieve this. Farlander is now one of my favourite books, and I look forwards to the next with anticipation. show less

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 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 Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge's Exalted Permission. Title: Farlander Series: Heart of the World Author: Col Buchanan Rating: of 5 Battle Axes Genre: Fantasy Pages: 402 Format: Kindle Synopsis: Ash, a Farlander and an assassin, is forced to take on an apprentice. Soon after the apprentice's training is finished, an assignment comes up that will take them into the heart of the Empire to kill the prince. The Empire knows they show more are coming. My Thoughts: Much more than just an assassin story. A full blown, Empire growing, religious strains, etc, etc. It also does not have a happy ending. And yet it drew me in, kept my attention and interest and even when things happened that I wasn't expecting, or liked, it was ok. I'll definitely be checking out the second book in this new series soon. " show less

Not bad but it just somehow didn't satisfy. A world in strife with names that sound like this one and then names that don't and I just had moments where I wanted him to call a smeerp a rabbit or a rabbit a smeerp but be consistent and just do it. This is a bit of a pet peeve and tends to break my suspension of disbelief.

The world is being overrun by the Holy Empire of Mann, which appears to be a religion of excesses and believe in control. It's a story of a farlander called Ash and his apprentice called Nico and their quest to avenge someone who was killed by the Empire and how their lives are changed by this quest.

The Empire comes across as just too evil to work over many years, they just stopped short of moustache twirling.

It's not a show more bad read but it just plodded along in several people's shoes, it reminded me of Gemmell, Kurtz and Martin and it just made me want to revisit the first two. I have no real urge to read the sequel. show less

I was hoping this would be an enjoyable fantasy story, but I ended up abandoning it after a couple of chapters. Apparently Buchanan wanted grimdark for his fantasy, which is to say it's full of grim depressingness I had no interest in reading. Okay, fine, an evil army that crushes everyone, I'm au fait with that sort of thing. But somehow, I couldn't get any pleasure out of the story itself. I didn't feel he needed to go on about the precise way they'd murdered the population of a town, or dwell on one of the oppressors as he contemplated raping a slave. I mean, the first couple of chapters were full of this stuff, while there was no humour at all, the characters weren't especially interesting (aging assassin, adoptee-to-be, feisty love show more interest, dead pet existing only to show character of owner), the conversation wasn't particularly scintillating. I just felt the balance of the story wouldn't be remotely in my favour. Shame. show less

I'm very close to giving this debut novel four stars. It is a very appealing, dark, original fantasy. The only thing holding me back is that I think he switched between a few too many viewpoints, some of them only for one or two scenes. We never really inhabited any particular character, and it lost something moving back and forth too often.

Engaging Characters and a good story that kept me interested. Its 'sword and sworcery' meets 'steampunk' feel turns some typical fantasy tropes on their heads while still fully embracing others.

While not quite fair to say "I can't wait for the next book," I will definitely pick it up and look foward to seeing the rest of the tale play out.