From Goodreads
The review
This was quite an interesting novel that introduced many different cultures and politics as well as a set of unique and flawed characters. I will say thought the things I found most interesting were the Moontide bridge and the close orbit of the moon …
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… which makes the sea so rough it’s impassable by ship. Not much was said on how the moon came to be this way only that the bridge was created to connect two continents. It was made for a good cause but the only thing it did cause was war.
There is definitely a Game of Thrones feel to this book (after all my copy had a sticker on it saying “If you love Game of Thrones, you’ll want to read this!”) with a lot of violence, swearing and mature content but that for me makes a book all the more better. The writing was well structured but the characters I felt could have been given more depth and personality as they didn’t feel completely real. The story itself was often slow in parts making me lose interest from time to time. But I’ve read worse and now I’m glad I read to the end…. what a cliffhanger!
Another thing I really liked about this book was the cultural complexity of both continents. The author has done a lot of research on eastern and western cultures in the past as well as religion. While others say they thought the author was lazy to base his fantasy world on the real world, I’ve got to say I quite liked it for it’s easier for me to imagine but mostly because it makes a good holiday read lol 😛 This style of worldbuilding is definitely not for everyone but for me I like to give all the different types of fantasies out there a chance.
I’m definitely going to read on in the series because the author really did a good job of setting up the scene here and introducing us to the two continents and characters. (Oh I should mention that this book was basically a giant prologue that sets up the story for the rest of the series to be built upon, it wasn’t exactly exciting all the time but it was definitely intriguing)
Who I’d recommend this for:
I would say definitely read this if you’re a fan of historical fantasy and if you like getting a blend of cultures in a good fantasy novel. Be warned this book can get slow but it’s worth it in the end!
Good to see a good review. I’m curious about these. I have this book in Dutch (in two books as they were split) but haven’t been able to motivatie myself to pick it up yet. It is not that well known.
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True it’s not well known, but I’d say this book is good if you have patience and things do speed up towards the end 🙂
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