4 1/2 stars.

I’m going to post a longer discussion of this on my newsletter, but in the meantime:

A Wind from the Wilderness, at the time of writing this review, is a semi-finalist in the current SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off), a competition to find the best self-published fantasy book, and it deserves its place.

This is a historical fantasy, mostly set during the first crusade as a Frankish and Greek army makes its way towards Jerusalem. It focuses mainly on three characters, A Syrian boy, Lukas, a Turkish girl, Ayla, and a Frankish count, Saint-Gilles. Lukas is a refugee in time, cast forward by dark magic four hundred and some years from his own time and caught up in the crusade. Ayla is looking for revenge against the Watchers, a group who killed her father.

The book follows their journey.

The book that this most reminded me of was A Game of Thrones (not surprising, perhaps, with A Game of Thrones being strongly influenced by history and historical fiction itself), not in the specific events but in the style of story. We have that same mixture of the young people (Lukas and Ayla) trying to get home and get revenge, joined with the battles and political scheming, mostly shown through Saint-Gilles’ point of view. The writing is vivid and lush. I don’t know much about the period, but the author convinced me that she did, and the details are immersive.

Oddly, as a fantasy fan, the part of the story that interested me least was the magic. It lacked the believability and the richness of the historical parts of the book, and sometimes I wished this was a straight historical novel. I had a few minor nitpicks. Although the writing was very good, there were a couple of places where Lukas spent a lot of time swallowing and gulping, and there were a few repeated words and phrases. All of this would be easy to fix in another copyedit, but it didn’t distract from my enjoyment. There were also a couple of chapters from other points of view that didn’t really add anything for me.

This is an extremely strong book. If you like historical fantasy or just historical fiction, I highly recommend this. Beware, though, if you can’t cope with harm to children, because there is one incident that may distress you, but I don’t want to give spoilers.

I’m looking forward to the sequels, which I understand will follow other members of Lukas’s family who have also been lost in other time periods.

Patrick Samphire is the author of the middle grade adventure Secrets of the Dragon Tomb, to be published in January 2016. The post Book Review: A Wind from the Wilderness, by Suzannah Rowntree first appeared on Patrick Samphire - Thrilling Tales, Astounding Adventures. Content is copyright Patrick Samphire.