Soul Born Epic Fantasy
Azure Spider Publications; 2 edition
November 15, 2018
370
All Opal wanted was to be respected as a wielder of magic, but her teachers passed her over time and time again. When a mysterious warlord embarks on a conquest to destroy the lands of Illyia, Opal seizes the opportunity to step out from the shadows of her instructors and take her rightful place among them. Tala, an alluring young elf, was banished from her tribe, hunted and nearly killed by the beasts of the deep forests, but more than anything else she is a survivor. Joining forces with an ancient elemental power, Tala finds herself in the center of an unrelenting human war. Flesh like leather and bone as strong as steel, Karn, a veteran from the first kingdom to fall, is fueled by vengeance. While pushing headlong into battle Karn begins recalling memories of another life: ghosts that haunt his dreams. Through death of soul, their new world is born.
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Reviewed by Madison Davis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
We have four major characters here: Opal, who wants to be one of the most respected mages of her time. We have Karn, Opal’s lover, and a character she has formed for herself and her purpose, as not only the man she loves but also a man she uses. The warrior is a weapon for her purpose. She doesn’t know Karn is stronger than everything she imagined. Also, we have Tala, a beautiful elf, who has her own plans, and we got the bad and evil warlord Mustaffa, a hateful and evil creature that needs to be destroyed.
In many ways, Opal, Karn and Tala work for the same purpose to the same goal, but still, there are their own plans which sometimes whirl up the story a bit.
This is one of the Kevin Breaux books. I know…. He starts off, just ‘somewhere,’ as the reader has the feeling, in an unknown world, with flat and superficial characters – and where is that going to go?
But also, as we know and love the author, his world becomes ours, his characters are developing while the reader dives deeper into the story and the plot.
I love the story, and I love the world Kevin Breaux created. I enjoyed the plot and character development. I also was curious about every new character I met, and of some of them, I felt I would hear more, hopefully in future books in the series. As we can see, Soul Born is the first book in a series.
I like Kevin Breaux’s descriptions and I love his connections. I love his way of ‘producing’ distrust when it’s unnecessary. I love how he leads readers on wrong paths at times. I love Opal in this story, and just as much I do like Tala.
However, I do have problems with some of the paragraphs that went from Breaux’s usual sensibility to rough ax blows that don’t seem to belong there. I’m not sure if Kevin Breaux realizes how some of his more sensitive readers (such as myself) are suffering from his sudden changes of being a wonderfully stroking, playful wordsmith, to turning into an insensitive pen-pusher that just throws a few words around. Only that particularly insensitive jumping between sensitivity and abyss that made me remove half a star.
