Tuesday 8 September 2015

FANTASY REVIEW: The Sleeping King - Cindy Dees and Bill Flippin

Release Date: 08/09/15
Publisher:  Pan Macmillan/Tor

SYNOPSIS:

Dees has won a Golden Heart Award, two RITAs for Category Suspense and Adventure and has also twice snared RT's Series Romantic Suspense of the Year. She is a great storyteller and the adventures in her more than fifty novels are often inspired by her own life. Dees is an Air Force vet, the youngest female pilot in Air Force history and fought in the first Gulf War. She's had amazing adventures and she's used her experiences to tell some kickass stories. But as much as she love romances, Cindy's other passion has been fantasy gaming. For almost twenty years she's been involved with Dragon Crest, one of the original live action role-playing games. She's the story content creator on the game and wanted to do an epic fantasy based on it, with the blessing and input of Dragon Crest founder Bill Flippin. The Sleeping King is the first in an epic fantasy series, featuring the best of the genre - near immortal imperial overlords, a prophecy of a sleeping elven king who's said to be the saviour of the races and two young people who are set on a path to save the day.


REVIEW:

This was a bit of a strange read to be honest as my original thoughts were about how terrible the writing was with the initial set up, but the more I read, the more the principle characters grew upon me. The world was very well developed, the dialogue between the key characters really helped develop them and overall allowed me to form a bond.

My key problem is that the original beginning was very clunky, it felt like it was trying to put way to much in and rather than giving the reader a whole host of detail, they over stuffed it when really, in my opinion it should have been quickly glossed over or skipped until a book concentrated mainly upon the Imperial Court. It could have kept it smoother, had it flowing easier on the reader and all round would have worked better for me on the whole.

That said, it is a book I enjoyed and I think that Cindy and Bill will have learned a lot from the writing of this. I can’t wait to see what else the world has in store for the reader as their epic quest continues.



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