An Idiot's Review of Splintered Lands: Through Fire Forged

You know, as someone who loves fantasy I actually come with a ton of pet peeves. Sometimes I can over come them if I like the story premise enough, but more often enough I just stew in discontentment and barely manage to finish the book. This happened to be the case of Splintered Lands: Through Fire Forged by James Tallett. And don't think I'm going to rant this entire review, I have more class than that.

So this story just shoves us straight into the plot. No real explanations on why the world is the way it is. There's a casual mention of a gigantic mage war that's made an Inquisition of sorts, but aside from that we're left in the dark. One of our main character's is Inswan, a baron within this gloomy dystopia that is doing his best to defend his lands from the invading robber baron, Iudas. Inswan is described to be a benevolent and wise ruler, who hates seeing injustice done to all people. Which is a big reason as to why he hates Iudas, this guy is a complete bastard. He rapes women, burns villages to the ground, steals from his serfs, basically he read up on the latest volume of How to be a Terrible and Cliched Villain. And this is where I have a massive issue with this book, Iswan is shown to be a man that is kind and benevolent, almost a perfect ruler. While his rival, Iudas, is a terrible excuse for a human being that needs a hot poker repeatedly ran through his ass.

On the opposite side of the country is Fryca. Apparently she is a technologist trying to make the world a better place ever so slowly. However all her efforts are constantly destroyed by The Knights of the Broken Wheel. Think Roman Catholic Church without any of the religion. Fryca is a clever and ambitious young woman...And that's it. I can't tell you much about her because her personality doesn't grow beyond that.

And by now you've probably discovered a theme with this review. While the premise is interesting, a world destroyed by a massive magic war, the characters and events are terribly written. The pace is rushed, the characters bland, and the theme on 'humans are bastards' wasn't executed very well. It was clear that the writer should have taken more time to write and establish the characters, and a bit more about the world around them. Dystopias are supposed to be dreary, but boring is never supposed to be part of the equation.

If you wanna buy it do so here.

I'm gonna go Christmas shopping now...