| Format | Full Book | Sample First 25% |
|---|---|---|
| Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser) | Buy | View sample |
| Kindle (.mobi for Kindle devices and Kindle apps) | Buy | Download sample |
| Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others) | Buy | Download sample |
| PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing) | Buy | No sample available |
| LRF (Use only for older model Sony Readers that don't support .epub) | Buy | Download sample |
| Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices) | Buy | Download sample |
| Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting) | Buy | No sample available |
| Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page) | Buy | No sample available |
Review by:
Cheryl Ann Wartman
on June 28, 2012 :
Overall, I enjoyed the story. The world was well crafted and people felt true. However, I found my attention was hot and cold, so it took me a long time to finish reading it. Sometimes I got lost in the politics. I loved the prologue and epilogue as seeing his parents made me relate to this unique character. It is a good summer read.
(reviewed long after purchase)
Review by:
Mia Darien
on March 27, 2012 :
This book was really good. My housework got done late today, because of this book.
It wasn't quite perfect. There was some world building and politic details that played big parts in the finale scenes that I thought should have been foreshadowed earlier. And despite the professional editor, there was quite a few edits missed. The beginning wandered a little bit, for my tastes.
Oh, and I am not happy with the author about one of Thamus' actions. (You'll know it when you read it.) *shakes menacing finger*
...and YET. The narrator, the characters, the world, the plot were all engaging and active enough that I didn't care about the "defects" and was glued to my ereader. I really liked all of it. I found some of the characters complex and some straightforward, yet only as I wished. (Characters I wanted to be straightforward were, and characters I didn't mind being twisty were.)
The world was quite fascinating. I really liked what the author did with the Prologue and Epilogue set-up, although I didn't "get it" until the Epilogue.
And I had to laugh, my apologies to the author, at the Glossary. It was useful, though still missed a couple titles I wanted better explanations for, but there was one part that looked like something Branning meant to go back to and fix before publishing and didn't. Namely, the wrong name of a father's character beside the son's name with a ? beside it. The name with ? was the name of one of the gods, but the father was correctly named in his own listing.
Don't worry, I've done it myself. Still, having been there, I did have to giggle.
Anyways. Despite my minor issues with some of it that might have meant a 4 or 4.5 otherwise, any book that holds on to my attention the way this one did once I was about a third of the way in deserves a 5. This author has another novel, which is awesomely free, that I totally just grabbed and will read soon.
(reviewed long after purchase)