The Big Peat
Darth Buddha
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- Apr 9, 2016
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(mild spoilers)
As regular readers may know, I have a soft spot for traditional Epic Fantasy. Having read Realm Breaker, I suspect Victoria Aveyard might too. You see, this book contains ancient bloodlines of power, knights, assassins, magic swords, elves, pirates, dark gods, and a threat to the whole world from another dimension.
This is mostly a good thing.
It feels like Realm Breaker was written to do one thing and one thing only; give its audience a full blast fantasy adventure in a deep world. Mission accomplished. There may be deeper themes that I have missed. If I did, the book entertains perfectly well without them. The given audience is YA, but I can see it working for pretty much everyone with a passing interest in Epic Fantasy.
The beating heart of Realm Breaker is its characters. They’re big, colourful, easily understood but not without depth; they’re the holiday cocktail of fantasy characters, and I mean that as a compliment. Don’t trust people who use cocktails as insults. There’s Corayne, the slightly rebellious and very curious daughter of a formidable pirate and a mysterious figure who just happens to be a member of said ancient bloodline of power. She’s informed of that by Domacridhan, theelven Elder warrior, and Sorasa, an outcast assassin, both of them dour grumps of different kinds. They hate each other. In fact their hate is so pure that the only way I see them ending is with angry sex. I pretty much never say stuff like that, but Aveyard’s sold me on that. There’s a big supporting cast, led by boringly dutiful squire Andry and his powerful queen Erida, all with similarly bold brash backgrounds and personalities.
The world has a similar vibe, which doesn’t work quite as well. Yes, it’s got plenty of interesting points to it, and a lot of background, but it doesn’t feel cohesive. It reminds me of the sort of RPG world where a bunch of different inspirations have been shoved together to provide cool backgrounds for all the different PCs in the party, but none of them go together. It’s here that being very Epic Fantasy isn’t entirely a good thing. I think it’d have been a better book if they’d shown less world more deeply.
The plot too is often a little formulaic which would be more than fine if it took us through moments that are hugely emotionally important to the characters, or just incredibly well written and epic. For the most part, that didn’t happen for me. As such, one particularly effective twist aside, it was just fine. Sadly where it started to fall short of that for me was the end, where the recruitment of more people for Team Ragtag Saves The World felt forced. In fact, thinking about that particular segment, it felt like an author rushing to get that mid-series Epic Fantasy feeling despite not being out of book one. It rarely works.
Nevertheless, the characters carried it through. The main three of Corayne, Sorasa, and Dom have wonderful chemistry together. They bicker well. Corayne does a good job of alternating between the young wide-eyed adventurer and the smart negotiator who keeps the hatebirds together. I have one criticism about some internal monologues feeling overly dramatic and unreal – looking at Erida in particular – but it was something I could shrug off while reading. It all reminded me of Dragonlance or the Belgariad in the best way.
There are things I could wish that Aveyard had done differently in Realm Breaker. Things that could have maybe made it amazing instead of rather good. But I very happy to have this book the way it is. It’s a blast of entertainment and there’ll always be room for stories like that on my shelves.
p.s. If by the end of this series we don’t have someone taking Ozzy’s Hellraiser and turning it into Realm Breaker, I will be sad.
This review was originally posted at Peat Long's blog
As regular readers may know, I have a soft spot for traditional Epic Fantasy. Having read Realm Breaker, I suspect Victoria Aveyard might too. You see, this book contains ancient bloodlines of power, knights, assassins, magic swords, elves, pirates, dark gods, and a threat to the whole world from another dimension.
This is mostly a good thing.
It feels like Realm Breaker was written to do one thing and one thing only; give its audience a full blast fantasy adventure in a deep world. Mission accomplished. There may be deeper themes that I have missed. If I did, the book entertains perfectly well without them. The given audience is YA, but I can see it working for pretty much everyone with a passing interest in Epic Fantasy.
The beating heart of Realm Breaker is its characters. They’re big, colourful, easily understood but not without depth; they’re the holiday cocktail of fantasy characters, and I mean that as a compliment. Don’t trust people who use cocktails as insults. There’s Corayne, the slightly rebellious and very curious daughter of a formidable pirate and a mysterious figure who just happens to be a member of said ancient bloodline of power. She’s informed of that by Domacridhan, the
The world has a similar vibe, which doesn’t work quite as well. Yes, it’s got plenty of interesting points to it, and a lot of background, but it doesn’t feel cohesive. It reminds me of the sort of RPG world where a bunch of different inspirations have been shoved together to provide cool backgrounds for all the different PCs in the party, but none of them go together. It’s here that being very Epic Fantasy isn’t entirely a good thing. I think it’d have been a better book if they’d shown less world more deeply.
The plot too is often a little formulaic which would be more than fine if it took us through moments that are hugely emotionally important to the characters, or just incredibly well written and epic. For the most part, that didn’t happen for me. As such, one particularly effective twist aside, it was just fine. Sadly where it started to fall short of that for me was the end, where the recruitment of more people for Team Ragtag Saves The World felt forced. In fact, thinking about that particular segment, it felt like an author rushing to get that mid-series Epic Fantasy feeling despite not being out of book one. It rarely works.
Nevertheless, the characters carried it through. The main three of Corayne, Sorasa, and Dom have wonderful chemistry together. They bicker well. Corayne does a good job of alternating between the young wide-eyed adventurer and the smart negotiator who keeps the hatebirds together. I have one criticism about some internal monologues feeling overly dramatic and unreal – looking at Erida in particular – but it was something I could shrug off while reading. It all reminded me of Dragonlance or the Belgariad in the best way.
There are things I could wish that Aveyard had done differently in Realm Breaker. Things that could have maybe made it amazing instead of rather good. But I very happy to have this book the way it is. It’s a blast of entertainment and there’ll always be room for stories like that on my shelves.
p.s. If by the end of this series we don’t have someone taking Ozzy’s Hellraiser and turning it into Realm Breaker, I will be sad.
This review was originally posted at Peat Long's blog
