BOOK REVIEW
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A common theme amongst my digital reads is the freebies I get from Kindle/Amazon First Reads. This one is no different. I loved the design of the cover and the bright colours. Basically, I am easily pleased! I didn't read the blog at all so went in blind, my only clue was that it was in the fantasy genre. It would seem that the floodgates to fantasy have now opened and I am being drawn to them, left, right, and centre. It only took one!
BLURB
An ancient machine holds the secrets of a distant world's past for two intimate strangers in the latest romantic fantasy adventure by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Charlie N. Holmberg.
Pell is an engineer and digger by trade - unearthing and repairing the fascinating artifacts left behind by the mysterious Ancients who once inhabited the sunbaked planet of Tempere. She'll do anything to help the people of her village survive and to better understand the secrets of what came before.
Heartwood and Moseus are keepers of a forbidding tower near the village of Emgarden. Inside are the remnants of complex machines the likes of which Pell has never seen. Considering her affinity for Ancient tech, the keepers know Pell is their only hope of putting the pieces of these metal puzzles together and getting them running. The tower's other riddle is Heartwood himself. He is an enigma, distant yet protective, to whom Pell is inexplicably drawn.
Pell's restoration of this broken behemoth soon brings disturbing visions - and the discovery that her relationship to it could finally reveal the origins of the tower's strange keepers and the unfathomable reason the truth has been hidden from her.
MY REVIEW
RATING - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
SPICE LEVEL - 🔥
I'm so pleased that I was drawn to the cover art of this book. It was a bit of a slow start, but once it got going, I couldn't get enough of it.
Pell is an interesting main character. She's sarcastic, sassy, strong, and caring. She lives on a planet in incessant daylight, the only respite coming with a mist that descends like clockwork, providing darkness and routine. She's a digger, digging wells and graves for the small village of Emgarden. While digging she discovers various artifacts, machines, equipment, and trinkets that the Ancients left behind. She's fascinated by how they work, tinkering and fiddling with them, trying to understand who the Ancients were. This is why she's chosen.
The story joins Pell as she is approached by Moseus, a strange person she's never seen before (quite an achievement, since Emgarden is surrounded by an impenetrable wall that cannot be crossed, climbed, or broken) and who asks for her engineering skills. Moseus is holed up in the mystery, previously inaccessible tower with Heartwood, another stranger. The tower is filled with broken Ancient machines, and Pell's job is to fix them.
There is alot of descriptive talk of the machines, which makes the pace initially very slow. It is hard to imagine something that doesn't exist in reality, just as it must be equally difficult to put in writing, something born of your imagination! I loved the small hand-drawn images of some of the machines and artifacts; they helped make sense of what was being described. I would have liked there to have been more of them. An image of the tower and its machines especially, as I ended up re-reading some parts multiple times before I could move on.
The romance was a damp squib for me initially as I didn't sense any attraction or passion between the characters. There's a reason for that though, which became a key part of the story. Spice-wise, mainly brief romanticised descriptions, and closed-door action, nothing too intense. It fit in well with the plot and helped to progress the story.
Something I've noticed about well-written fantasy books is the attention to detail within the language and dialogue. In this book for example, something as simple as the phrase "for the love of God" is changed to "for the love of Serpent" (the Ancient lore for the people of Tempere is that the planet was created by a giant serpent who creates and then moves on, God-like). The fact that this planet has a constant sun with no night, just mist, means that the words "day" and "night" don't exist. It's very clever and indicates the depth of detail involved in creating an entirely different world.
There are a few BIG reveals, some slow burn, with clues and hints throughout, however, there were a couple that were entirely out of the blue (to me at least!) I pieced it together along with Pell, our realisations happened at the same time. Once this started, and the pieces began to fall in place, the pace picked up and the last few chapters were full of action, intensity, drama, and revelation.
The story was intricately and carefully crafted, every little nuance was created with an end goal in mind. I connected with Pell as a character, though the others (even Heartwood initially) were slightly less developed. This was, in part, intentional given one of the main revelations. A door has been left slightly ajar to further story development. I would be keen to read more if the author expands further, exploring the next stage of Emgarden's quest (though looking at her website, this book is listed as a standalone which makes it unlikely that I'll get to see what's next. I will need to imagine it instead!).
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially as the plot developed and came together. It's a really epic story of friendship, power, and perseverance and is a lovely fantasy read.
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