Chanticleer Book Reviews

Author: s-j-hartland

  • The LAST SEER KING (The Shadow Sword series Book 2) by S.J. Hartland – Dark Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Dark Fantasy Horror

    The LAST SEER KING (The Shadow Sword series Book 2) by S.J. Hartland – Dark Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Dark Fantasy Horror

    When it comes to fantasy novels, one thing is certain, as was famously said in the venerated musical, The Music Man, “You gotta know the territory.”

    Author S.J. Hartland clearly does.

    In The Last Seer King, the second volume in her Shadow Sword epic fantasy series, the creates a world with a granular intensity that envelopes the reader from page one. You see this world clearly in all its dark details. You also feel the power, the all-too-human intricacies of its leading characters. This is a world that feels authentic, as though the writer lived there and let us see it as clearly as her own first-person experience. Simply put, it works.

    There are well-developed characters here who fight on despite their emotional challenges. Dannon, who, despite his prowess on battlefields, yearns to belong to a people, to someone. Kaell, who dies and whose soul enters into the body of a woman who is coveted by a male warrior. The woman just happens to be the dead sister of the king of the Isles. Can Kaell possibly be a woman to a man when he is still a man and a warrior?

    What is less straightforward is summarizing the plot. Hartland helps us with the book’s logline: “It’s the secrets we hide from ourselves that gives others power…” Dark? Yes! Foreboding? Absolutely! It’s everything we love about S. J. Hartland and more.

    Readers are gifted a 600-page second in the series novel with dark and twisted plots and characters that would sooner kill you than look at you. There are warring territories, each with their own agendas. The leading characters come into this story with the ancient battles of their people still fresh in mind. Heath, Kaell, Vraymorg (also known as Val Arques) and Dannon, are constantly in some state of flux with each other. There is magic at hand: the power to insert one’s essence into the body of another, the ability to be both a human and a blood-sucking ghoul, the creation of “death riders” who live on and do their evil for centuries.

    This is rich and delicious stuff, made more so by a full cast of characters and their interwoven relationships. The glossary of characters at the end of the book, listed by their “tribes,” and a drill-down of their familial relations, is a major Rosetta Stone for readers to better understand what is happening. Trying to understand these relationships without it adds a layer of difficulty in reading this compelling, and oftentimes, complicated book. Besides, you want to know every detail, right?

    Another helpful tip: read, The 19th Bladesman, (The Shadow Sword series Book 1) that introduces the major characters in The Last Seer King. And be prepared to pick up the third book in the series due to be released in 2020.

    For readers who love fantasy, this novel is clearly a strong contender for a reader’s attention, in much the same way Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, or J.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. Simply put, The Last Seer King by S. J. Hartland is an exciting well-crafted, epic-fantasy worthy of your time.

     

  • The 19th BLADESMAN, Book 1 of the Shadow Sword Series by S. J. Hartland – Epic Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Action/Adventure

    The 19th BLADESMAN, Book 1 of the Shadow Sword Series by S. J. Hartland – Epic Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Action/Adventure

    A dark, medieval fantasy with a hopeful message from debut author, S. J. Hartland will draw attention for its atmospheric settings, evil twists, and righteous triumphs.

    Lord Vraymorg is a seemingly ageless warrior whose duty is to train young bladesmen for their heavy task. These specially selected assassins, called bonded warriors, have the onerous responsibility of killing ghouls – and only ghouls – and always running the risk of being attacked. Being attacked by ghouls means certain death. And dying by ghoul is something everyone naturally wants to avoid. But something is different with Kaell, Vraymorg’s latest charge. In fact, the 19th bladesman carries a special destiny, one directed by the gods. Kaell is bright, defiant, and, though Vraymorg cannot bear to think of it, lovable, like a son. This fatherly love is the crux of the warrior lord’s struggle. How can he put this young man into harm’s way? For it is a death sentence to be trained as a warrior and pick up arms against the ghouls. Vraymorg doesn’t have it easy, and we get it.

    Told from multiple points of view, Hartland’s story offers strong, masculine heroes like Kaell and Vraymorg, and intriguing feminine heroes like Rozenn, whose passion is matched by her infinite knowledge of Vraymorg’s past, and Azenor, a seer bound to Kaell in death. Even Archanin, the eerie, bloodthirsty leader of the ghouls, has his say, as he urges his band to spare Kaell’s life so that he can become one of them, a fate, perhaps, worse than death. When word comes that Kaell has died, leaving only his sword, Rozenn tells Vraymorg that the sword is a mysterious instrument with magical powers, powers that may save the lost boy, if wielded by someone who cares more for him than anyone else.

    This is Hartland’s debut novel. It is a prodigious undertaking, notable for its length (more than 600 pages), and is worth the time spent, as it becomes an experience, a journey into an ancient, fabled world that beckons with echoes of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Journalist Hartland has fleshed out each of the many characters and given them their place in this complex saga – and, one imagines, in the broadening tale to come, since we are told she has a sequel in the works. She has a gift for prose, proven on nearly every page.

    At its heart, The 19th Bladesman examines the love of a father for an adoptive student/son he refuses to allow himself to care about, suspecting that the young man’s fate will be tragic and that his demise will come at his teacher’s hand. The mystery of Vraymorg’s relationship with Kaell and of Kaell’s indomitable will to please his mentor are the twin forces that buoy Hartland’s grandly conceived work and keep the constantly burgeoning plot afloat.