Sean Randall reviewed A darkness forged in fire by Chris Evans (Book one of the Iron elves)
Review of 'A darkness forged in fire' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I think i'm a bit of an oddity when it comes to reading fantasy. I quite enjoyed this one, the power of trees seems an unusual thing to find - though within the novel the setting makes sense, of course. I was slightly disappointed because the grandeur of the politics seemed to offer a lot more promise than they eventually come up with. The characters were fairly deep and flushed out, and there's room for backstory with many of them (the dwarf in particular, I fancy). Some of the leads were a little underplayed, and I got more out of reading about the grunts and watching the common soldiers do their thing. The line versus good and evil was quite well muddied, which is always useful in a high fantasy, and the writing sweeping and majestic with a great linguistic grounding. I fear that perhaps some of the material would …
I think i'm a bit of an oddity when it comes to reading fantasy. I quite enjoyed this one, the power of trees seems an unusual thing to find - though within the novel the setting makes sense, of course. I was slightly disappointed because the grandeur of the politics seemed to offer a lot more promise than they eventually come up with. The characters were fairly deep and flushed out, and there's room for backstory with many of them (the dwarf in particular, I fancy). Some of the leads were a little underplayed, and I got more out of reading about the grunts and watching the common soldiers do their thing. The line versus good and evil was quite well muddied, which is always useful in a high fantasy, and the writing sweeping and majestic with a great linguistic grounding. I fear that perhaps some of the material would rub a little thin, were it to go on overmuch, but who knows what other surprises and twists are in store in subsequent volumes.