Kingshold
Author: D.P. Woolliscroft Genre: Adult Fantasy Publisher: Self Published
**I received these books from the author as a gift**
Neenahwi is the daughter to Jyuth, the ancient wizard who founded the Kingdom of Edland and she is not happy. It’s not just that her father was the one who killed the King, or that he didn’t tell her about his plans. She’s not happy because her father is leaving, slinking off into retirement and now she has to clean up his mess.
Alana is a servant at the palace and the unfortunate soul to draw the short straw to attend to Jyuth. Alana knows that intelligence and curiosity aren’t valued in someone of her station, but sometimes she can’t help herself and so finds herself drawn into the Wizard’s schemes, and worst of all, coming up with her own plans.
Chance brings this unlikely band together to battle through civil unrest, assassinations, political machinations, pirates and monsters, all for a common cause that they know, deep down, has no chance of succeeding – bringing hope to the people of Kingshold.
I’ve heard a lot of great things about this book from fellow book blogger friends, so I’d always wanted to give this series a shot. When Dave reached out and asked me to edit the upcoming 5th installment–which also required reading the previous four books–it didn’t take much arm twisting to sign me on! Here are my thoughts on the first two books of the series.
Likes
- The characters. If you know me, it’s really hard for me to enjoy a book if I don’t enjoy the characters and feel something from them. With such a large cast of characters to choose from, it was easy to find characters I loved and characters I hated (but only because they deserved it). Alana, in particular, I’m very fond of.
- Slow building tension. Something that this book (and this series in particular) does well is slowly building the tension consistently, which makes the end really easily to fly through, because you just need to know what happens next.
Dislikes
- Slow to connect. Despite really enjoying the characters, it took me a little bit to get into the story. I’m not sure if it just because it’s a slower pace or because it’s a first book tasked with creating the worldbuilding (so it could naturally be slower), but it did take me a hot second to really get into it.
- Tested my belief a bit. I did feel there was this almost slapstick part of the plot, with how Jyuth handles poor leadership (don’t want to say so much to give into spoilers) that tested my belief a little bit and felt almost out of touch with the more serious plot that results from it. It does get better reading more into it, but I think that is also why I struggled with the beginning a little bit.
Tales of Kingshold
Author: D.P. Woolliscroft Genre: Adult Fantasy Publisher: Self Published
**I received these books from the author as a gift**
If you loved Kingshold, discover the next installment in the epic Wildfire Cycle.
Tales of Kingshold, Book 1.5 of the Wildfire Cycle, includes four novelettes and six short stories.
Likes
- The quick pace. It was really easy to read and it was nice as a reader to be able to read a solid chunk of a book like Kingshold and then immediately dive back into the world with some smaller snippets.
Dislikes
- The playing with time. I wasn’t a big fan of how some stories within this short story collection took place before the events of Kingshold. This might have annoyed me because I just wanted to see what happened next, so seeing stories set before felt like a step backwards, to me.
- Confusion on how this plays into the major storyline. There were also a few stories (like Jyuth’s storyline, for example) where I struggled to make the connection on how it was meant to help prepare for me the next book, so I felt a little more confusion reading through this.
Ratings
For Kingshold, I gave the book 3.5 gems out of 5. I enjoyed it and definitely would have kept reading with the series even if I hadn’t needed to for editing purposes. 🙂
For Tales, I gave the book 2.5 out of 5 gems. I think the format just wasn’t for me, with the short story collection, when I really just wanted to keep going with the main storyline. I think others might enjoy Tales much more than me, so I hope you still give this series a shot (especially because Ioth: Tales of Light?! Hellooooooo).
Cheers.
It took me a while to get into Kingshold too but once I did I enjoyed. And yeah I didn’t like Tales as much but I also think it is because short stories are aittle harder for me to get into. I’m working on that.
Yeah, I think it’s just one of those cases where some styles don’t work for me personally, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good!