Progeny by RT Kaelin - reading fox's review
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1reading_fox
Progeny - by RT Kaelin an LT Author.
My review
I've swapped a couple of PM's with the author about this, so I thought I'd open it up for wider discussion from anyone else who might be interested.
.................................
Could be better. Not bad for a debut novel, but still needs quite a bit more work to develop into something thoroughly excellent. There is promise for that development, although my expectations are not that high. Basically a fairly standard light fantasy trek through the countryside as our heroes discover they are not the simple village children they've always thought, but are instead fated to become saviours of the world. And here already, we're facing one of the usual problems in the genre, that of proportionality and scale. the Bad Guys are a bunch of malevolent gods. GODS: with huge godlike powers, facing in effect a couple of kids. So what do the gods do? they use their vast godlike powers ..... to persuade a couple of minor border lords to sneakily start a minor border incursion of a tiny fragment of a country, using only normal troops. Right. Equally the 300 ft water monster is out of believability too, 30' fine; 100' well if you must; 300' nope, no chance, water pulls apart under its own weight at that sort of size. Magic only gets you so far.
The first section maybe not even a quarter of the book is particularly bad. The rest improves significantly and is worth persevering with, however I suspect many casual readers will not make it that far. This is one of the problems indie authors have to contend with: not only does their writing have to be as good as a published author, it has to be better. The opening section is not, it is instead everything you expect when you hear 'independently published author' Very clunky descriptions, and frequent grammar/editing mistakes. When you've described a place as 'barely a village' (the correct word here is hamlet), to then spend the next few chapters randomly switching between 'town' and 'village' is confusing. Characters in the middle of dramatically fleeing for their lives, suddenly stop and spend several paragraphs gazing back over their town, describing how it used to be, what the people looked like, and how the crops grew ... no they run for their lives, maybe once they're safe around a campfire, only then might they allow such reminiscences to form.
Once we're all introduced to the world and the characters the story picks up a bit and the grand Quest gets underway. The world itself is quite good; a wide variety of terrains; some sensible thought about how it all operates, and a nicely inventive magic system, with enough limitations to keep things honest, but enough power to make a difference. What at first pass seems to be the usual DnD races - elves, halflings and Orcs, and expanded by the addition of razorfiends and a few other inventive details.
The characters themselves start to grow on you a bit, I'm never that taken by the two heroic children, but their overlooked elder brother Jak, and a few of the other incidental characters are quite well crafted. You can see signs of the standard DnD Adventure party forming, but it is mostly quite well done. The rather abrupt introduction of what turns out to be another two main characters some 500 pages into the book comes across very disconcertingly, but once their tale begins to obviously integrate with the main storyline, they work quite well, even if they'd have been better introduced much earlier on. The multi-characters jumping points of view, continues to annoy me throughout the book, but it is just an authorial style I've never really liked, and hasn't been too badly done. As usual with authors who use this style, there is too much foreshadowing of events by giving short cut aways to the bad guys planning their actions. This is unnecessary, the characters should be surprised by events, let the readers be so too.
Perhaps my biggest complaint is that there is far too clear a division between the 'Good' and the 'Bad' characters, with little or no moral ambiguity between them. There are no greys in this world, no difficult choices without a right answer. OK a couple of times the children are regretful about the first lives they take, but there was never any doubt that they are on the right course. All 100 soldiers agree to desert their sworn oaths on little more than circumstantial evidence, no-one has nay doubts at all. This is perhaps the key dividing line between light fantasy like this, and the much more gritty realistic and heavy Epic fantasy that can be so much more enthralling. The only tensions that ever arises is over which brother will end up with the pretty girl, there's not even a competition of guys for the heroine to chose between.
Light but fun, once the clunky initial section has been struggled through the rest of it becomes engaging enough and with luck the sequels will develop into truly breathtaking tales that this well imagined world could become.
My review
I've swapped a couple of PM's with the author about this, so I thought I'd open it up for wider discussion from anyone else who might be interested.
.................................
Could be better. Not bad for a debut novel, but still needs quite a bit more work to develop into something thoroughly excellent. There is promise for that development, although my expectations are not that high. Basically a fairly standard light fantasy trek through the countryside as our heroes discover they are not the simple village children they've always thought, but are instead fated to become saviours of the world. And here already, we're facing one of the usual problems in the genre, that of proportionality and scale. the Bad Guys are a bunch of malevolent gods. GODS: with huge godlike powers, facing in effect a couple of kids. So what do the gods do? they use their vast godlike powers ..... to persuade a couple of minor border lords to sneakily start a minor border incursion of a tiny fragment of a country, using only normal troops. Right. Equally the 300 ft water monster is out of believability too, 30' fine; 100' well if you must; 300' nope, no chance, water pulls apart under its own weight at that sort of size. Magic only gets you so far.
The first section maybe not even a quarter of the book is particularly bad. The rest improves significantly and is worth persevering with, however I suspect many casual readers will not make it that far. This is one of the problems indie authors have to contend with: not only does their writing have to be as good as a published author, it has to be better. The opening section is not, it is instead everything you expect when you hear 'independently published author' Very clunky descriptions, and frequent grammar/editing mistakes. When you've described a place as 'barely a village' (the correct word here is hamlet), to then spend the next few chapters randomly switching between 'town' and 'village' is confusing. Characters in the middle of dramatically fleeing for their lives, suddenly stop and spend several paragraphs gazing back over their town, describing how it used to be, what the people looked like, and how the crops grew ... no they run for their lives, maybe once they're safe around a campfire, only then might they allow such reminiscences to form.
Once we're all introduced to the world and the characters the story picks up a bit and the grand Quest gets underway. The world itself is quite good; a wide variety of terrains; some sensible thought about how it all operates, and a nicely inventive magic system, with enough limitations to keep things honest, but enough power to make a difference. What at first pass seems to be the usual DnD races - elves, halflings and Orcs, and expanded by the addition of razorfiends and a few other inventive details.
The characters themselves start to grow on you a bit, I'm never that taken by the two heroic children, but their overlooked elder brother Jak, and a few of the other incidental characters are quite well crafted. You can see signs of the standard DnD Adventure party forming, but it is mostly quite well done. The rather abrupt introduction of what turns out to be another two main characters some 500 pages into the book comes across very disconcertingly, but once their tale begins to obviously integrate with the main storyline, they work quite well, even if they'd have been better introduced much earlier on. The multi-characters jumping points of view, continues to annoy me throughout the book, but it is just an authorial style I've never really liked, and hasn't been too badly done. As usual with authors who use this style, there is too much foreshadowing of events by giving short cut aways to the bad guys planning their actions. This is unnecessary, the characters should be surprised by events, let the readers be so too.
Perhaps my biggest complaint is that there is far too clear a division between the 'Good' and the 'Bad' characters, with little or no moral ambiguity between them. There are no greys in this world, no difficult choices without a right answer. OK a couple of times the children are regretful about the first lives they take, but there was never any doubt that they are on the right course. All 100 soldiers agree to desert their sworn oaths on little more than circumstantial evidence, no-one has nay doubts at all. This is perhaps the key dividing line between light fantasy like this, and the much more gritty realistic and heavy Epic fantasy that can be so much more enthralling. The only tensions that ever arises is over which brother will end up with the pretty girl, there's not even a competition of guys for the heroine to chose between.
Light but fun, once the clunky initial section has been struggled through the rest of it becomes engaging enough and with luck the sequels will develop into truly breathtaking tales that this well imagined world could become.
2readafew
The one thing I have to say about the 'GODS' vs 'children' is that the 'bad' gods have to be circumspect or else the 'good' gods would have reason to join in the fray.
The 'light' fantasy you mention is one of the reasons I've compared the story to Eddings.
The 'light' fantasy you mention is one of the reasons I've compared the story to Eddings.
3reading_fox
#2 you can trick a god? Surely the good gods are ever vigilent and will/do know immediately something is afoot. The Neutrals do, and have already intervened.
Yes the comparison to Eddings' is apt - although opinions will vary whether that's a good thing or not.
Yes the comparison to Eddings' is apt - although opinions will vary whether that's a good thing or not.
4readafew
you can trick a god? in almost any fantasy that has actual gods as characters. They aren't omnipresent nor omnipotent, which is also true of most polytheistic religions as well. That is part of the appeal in fantasy.
I'm also pretty sure there was only 1 'neutral' who really knew what was going on.
ETA: you are correct, in that a LOT of people don't like Eddings for his 'simplistic' good vs. bad.
I'm also pretty sure there was only 1 'neutral' who really knew what was going on.
ETA: you are correct, in that a LOT of people don't like Eddings for his 'simplistic' good vs. bad.
5jjwilson61
What at first pass seems to be the usual DnD races - elves, halflings and Orcs, and expanded by the addition of razorfiends and a few other inventive details.
You've lost a thought here. It sounds like your saying that there's a significant difference with the standard elves, halflings, and orcs but you don't explain it.
You've lost a thought here. It sounds like your saying that there's a significant difference with the standard elves, halflings, and orcs but you don't explain it.
