The Kingmaker

The Kingmaker Saga #1

by James G. Pearson

The country of Vikinsa is a land populated by five kingdoms, all which have laid in peace for the last century. No wars have been fought between them since the toppling of the empire that bound them together. But a conspiracy, vast in size and born out of revenge, threatens that peace.

Rhyn, the last Kingmaker, is left questioning himself in the wake of the conspiracy. He has two choices. To rise, or to fall.

Genres: Fantasy

334 pages, Paperback

First published February 6, 2014

About the author

Hi, my name is James G. Pearson, I’m the author of The Kingmaker Saga. You are on the official GoodReads page for this new fantasy series. Feel free to leave comments and even send me a message. I grew up in Middlesbrough in the North East of England and moved to the South near Bath to finish my Secondary Education. Before you ask, no I don’t have an accent anymore. Sad, I know. I’ve traveled through most of Europe, Australia, Egypt and Thailand. I love the culture of different countries and their history, rich in stories and beliefs. Of course I love history as a whole, medieval history being one of my favourite periods in time. I take a lot of inspiration from events through life, either my own experiences or those of others and couple them with wild ideas that spawn in my manic thought factory known as my brain.

I particularly love attempting to come up with a good villain. What would a hero be without a nemesis? In there lies the beauty of creating a novel with a hero, there can be a band of heroes or just one and there is always more than one villain. At least, I believe there should be. Heroes face constant trials, not just one at the end. Which leads me to my novel and book series, The Kingmaker Saga.

The Kingmaker is a novel published by James G. Pearson. It will be the first in the series of The Kingmaker Saga. The Kingmaker is based in the fictional country of Vikinsa, a country divided into five kingdoms. The land has seen peace and war in it’s time, and peace has largely been kept by a line of warriors known as Kingmakers. Follow the Kingmaker known as Rhyn, as he unravels a conspiracy that is set to plunge not one kingdom, but an entire country into chaos and war.

Reviews

[Belart Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 out of 5.

What does 3 out of 5 mean to this reviewer?
It means that the content that I read was mostly enjoyable but had some kinks, to simplify. What that means for this book is more time and polish were needed to truly make this work a stand out experience but as is I still enjoyed what was there.

THE COOL:

I liked the plot and characters quite a bit. While I would not call the characterizations in The Kingmaker complex by any means I still found a lot of the characters very enjoyable. I liked the young Kingmaker/Warrior Rhyn and his "bestie" Dirham. I thought Dirham had the best characterization in the entire book with all of the issues he was juggling, his love of his family, and his everyman attitude were highly appealing. I thought Rhyn himself should've been more torn apart and reluctant in dealing with the loss of his father and his adoptive new homeland. But I don't fault the author for a personality choice at all, as an author myself. I know you creatively do what comes to you. I do believe that lots of thought should be put into your concepts and execution though. The other characters I liked were Carrick the medieval serial killer (though not initially) and the mysterious masked man. The plot had enough twists and turns to keep me interested and turning the page and the big plot changer that happens near the middle of the story really took me by surprise. Magic is definitely touched upon in the book too and used in some neat ways.

THE NOT SO COOL:

WHAT IS THE KINGMAKER?
We're never really told what the Kingmaker is. We know that the Kingmaker is important and that they are good at fighting but never told exactly what they can do. I think this book, particularly because of its title should inform us more about what a Kingmaker is, what they could do, and maybe even a little history of the Kingmakers but alas it isn't so. And so at the end of the KINGMAKER: Book 1 of the KINGMAKER Saga I still know very little of what a Kingmaker actually does. Without a way to judge what the Kingmaker is potentially capable of I lost interest in Rhyn a few chapters in and then he finally admits to his true abilities and I saw him get defeated or near defeated in a few one-on-one skirmishes. So the hyping of the Kingmaker's abilities was quickly lost on me early on.There are a few examples of what the Kingmaker can do but none are game changing or show how this person can change the tide of a battle and end a war like we're led to believe. Right off the bat the Kingmaker's legend and mythos are disparaged when the initial Kingmaker shown is quickly killed by a small force and then right after when the second Kingmaker is easily captured for fuzzy reasons that are never wholly explained. And with that lie the bulk of my issues with the book.

GREAT CONCEPTS COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER UTILIZED.
For one the Leonhardt, a fierce army of half lion half men are described to be a vicious legendary transformation unseen for hundreds of years. It's a transformation fueled by magic but the only prerequisites seem to be that you have the blood of the Leonhardt and sign a magical waiver. Indeed even newly army joined peasants can become Leonhardt. Titan Goldclaw uses 100,000 of these supposed crazy powerful warriors against an army only 5,000 strong and still loses a considerable amount of his soldiers. With numbers like that the point of a super strong transformation loses its meaning and necessity. It would have been more compelling for the Leonhardt to be only 500-2,000 strong, the underdogs, and have access to this sort of magic. It would make more sense since we're initially shown the Lion kingdom to be in shambles without a strong military. If the Leonhardt had won that battle it would mean something, as it was though it just made them look weak and the transformation unimportant. Rhyn's effortless kill of a Leonhardt Enforcer also did the Leonhardt no favors especially since he loses a duel to a mere human right after.

FUZZY LOGIC
There is quite a bit of fuzzy logic to sift through too. Some of the plots made by the characters don't quite add up. Some of the events that occurred make no sense considering the character's motives. I found a lot of this but am not so crass as to spoil whole scenes to illustrate it. The one example I'll share is with the whole raising of the Leonhardt army. The one was raised from next to nothing in a kingdom wide draft to serve a man that they should have hated for all intents and purposes. They were part of an isolationist kingdom that hadn't seen war for hundreds of years and mostly comprised of peasants. Suddenly they, through custom/ancient law/word of king flock to the army in great numbers and now have access to a powerful transformation. The king has armor made specifically for these larger transformations and marches into a war with 100,000 transforming soldiers in order to fight a group of humans that only numbered 5,000. More fuzzy logic concludes with this group when that battle ends but revealing that would slightly spoil a scene or two. Also towards the end a group rises up to join the fight but I was thinking to myself "where the F where you the whole time? Couldn't you see all that fire and death before?"

TOO MANY POV's
While I really liked the POV's of Rhyn, Dirham, and Carrick and found the POV's of Alanis and Lyssa to be useful, I felt overall that there were way too many voices telling this one story. The story isn't complex enough to require anywhere near as many POV's and even with the ones we do get it often times jumps sporadically to another character mid paragraph. Tiberius' POV's do offer an insight into story as well but I would much likely stick closer to Rhyn and learn more about his abilities, and what being a kingmaker means to him, and just generally what a Kingmaker does. I would like more with Dirham and more with Carrick definitely. What makes Carrick the way he is, what is his ultimate goal? Titan Goldclaw was also a necessary POV but just felt two dimensional to me. If he wasn't trying to conquer things I would have no interest in him whatsoever. And everyone else that was covered felt completely unnecessary to me. The author may be setting something up but with his subject matter he could do well to set it up in a more established character's POV or make these characters more interesting.

NEEDS A FINAL ROUND OF PROFESSIONAL EDITING
The book has a lot of grammar mistakes, I mean a lot! Towards the beginning there are only a few and you can gloss over them easily but towards the end they're glaring and happen really often which takes you out of the experience. Luckily this is the easiest section to fix since the author can easily update the book here whenever. I've noted down the errors I've found in the notes but these can easily be rectified with a (competent) copyeditor.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

This book is filled with great concepts, interesting characters, and a fast paced plot that keeps you guessing. What it needs more of is POLISH. In every possible way it needs more polish. A brief study of war and war tactics can make those sieges and battles even more epic. Some study of swordplay and fighting can make those conflicts more authentic and engaging. A fleshing out of those great concepts can truly make those ideas shine. My advice? Pull back on servicing the plot and let the characters be themselves and let us in on their world. I'd rather learn more about Rhyn, Dirham, and Carrick than constantly jump around to move the plot forward. Don't pull back too far on the mystery of the Kingmakers. At least tell us what they can do, what makes them better. That and a healthy dose of final edits by a professional would give this the 4/5 stars from me. Anyways still a good read and I look forward to the next (hopefully improved) adventure.

[Belart Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kingmaker(Slight spoilers)

THE COOL:
I liked the plot and characters quite a bit. While I would not call the characterizations in The Kingmaker complex by any means I still found a lot of the characters very enjoyable. I liked the young Kingmaker/Warrior Rhyn and his "bestie" Dirham. I thought Dirham had the best characterization in the entire book with all of the issues he was juggling, his love of his family, and his everyman attitude were highly appealing. I thought Rhyn himself should've been more torn apart and reluctant in dealing with the loss of his father and his adoptive new homeland. But I don't fault the author for a personality choice at all, as an author myself. I know you creatively do what comes to you. I do believe that lots of thought should be put into your concepts and execution though. The other characters I liked were Carrick the medieval serial killer (though not initially) and the mysterious masked man. The plot had enough twists and turns to keep me interested and turning the page and the big plot changer that happens near the middle of the story really took me by surprise. Magic is definitely touched upon in the book too and used in some neat ways.

THE NOT SO COOL:
What is the Kingmaker?
We're never really told what the Kingmaker is. We know that the Kingmaker is important and that they are good at fighting but never told exactly what they can do. I think this book, particularly because of its title should inform us more about what a Kingmaker is, what they could do, and maybe even a little history of the Kingmakers but alas it isn't so. And so at the end of the KINGMAKER: Book 1 of the KINGMAKER Saga I still know very little of what a Kingmaker actually does. Without a way to judge what the Kingmaker is potentially capable of I lost interest in Rhyn a few chapters in and then he finally admits to his true abilities and I saw him get defeated or near defeated in a few one-on-one skirmishes. So the hyping of the Kingmaker's abilities was quickly lost on me early on.There are a few examples of what the Kingmaker can do but none are game changing or show how this person can change the tide of a battle and end a war like we're led to believe. Right off the bat the Kingmaker's legend and mythos are disparaged when the initial Kingmaker shown is quickly killed by a small force and then right after when the second Kingmaker is easily captured for fuzzy reasons that are never wholly explained. And with that lie the bulk of my issues with the book.

GREAT CONCEPTS COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER UTILIZED.
For one the Leonhardt, a fierce army of half lion half men are described to be a vicious legendary transformation unseen for hundreds of years. It's a transformation fueled by magic but the only prerequisites seem to be that you have the blood of the Leonhardt and sign a magical waiver. Indeed even newly army joined peasants can become Leonhardt. Titan Goldclaw uses 100,000 of these supposed crazy powerful warriors against an army only 5,000 strong and still loses a considerable amount of his soldiers. With numbers like that the point of a super strong transformation loses its meaning and necessity. It would have been more compelling for the Leonhardt to be only 500-2,000 strong, the underdogs, and have access to this sort of magic. It would make more sense since we're initially shown the Lion kingdom to be in shambles without a strong military. If the Leonhardt had won that battle it would mean something, as it was though it just made them look weak and the transformation unimportant. Rhyn's effortless kill of a Leonhardt Enforcer also did the Leonhardt no favors especially since he loses a duel to a mere human right after.

FUZZY LOGIC
There is quite a bit of fuzzy logic to sift through too. Some of the plots made by the characters don't quite add up. Some of the events that occurred make no sense considering the character's motives. I found a lot of this but am not so crass as to spoil whole scenes to illustrate it. The one example I'll share is with the whole raising of the Leonhardt army. The one was raised from next to nothing in a kingdom wide draft to serve a man that they should have hated for all intents and purposes. They were part of an isolationist kingdom that hadn't seen war for hundreds of years and mostly comprised of peasants. Suddenly they, through custom/ancient law/word of king flock to the army in great numbers and now have access to a powerful transformation. The king has armor made specifically for these larger transformations and marches into a war with 100,000 transforming soldiers in order to fight a group of humans that only numbered 5,000. More fuzzy logic concludes with this group when that battle ends but revealing that would slightly spoil a scene or two. Also towards the end a group rises up to join the fight but I was thinking to myself "where the F where you the whole time? Couldn't you see all that fire and death before?"

TOO MANY POV's
While I really liked the POV's of Rhyn, Dirham, and Carrick and found the POV's of Alanis and Lyssa to be useful, I felt overall that there were way too many voices telling this one story. The story isn't complex enough to require anywhere near as many POV's and even with the ones we do get it often times jumps sporadically to another character mid paragraph. Tiberius' POV's do offer an insight into story as well but I would much likely stick closer to Rhyn and learn more about his abilities, and what being a kingmaker means to him, and just generally what a Kingmaker does. I would like more with Dirham and more with Carrick definitely. What makes Carrick the way he is, what is his ultimate goal? Titan Goldclaw was also a necessary POV but just felt two dimensional to me. If he wasn't trying to conquer things I would have no interest in him whatsoever. And everyone else that was covered felt completely unnecessary to me. The author may be setting something up but with his subject matter he could do well to set it up in a more established character's POV or make these characters more interesting.

A FINAL ROUND OF PROFESSIONAL EDITING
The book has a lot of grammar mistakes, I mean a lot! Towards the beginning there are only a few and you can gloss over them easily but towards the end they're glaring and happen really often which takes you out of the experience. Luckily this is the easiest section to fix since the author can easily update the book here whenever. I've noted down the errors I've found in the notes but these can easily be rectified with a (competent) copyeditor.

Final Thoughts:
This book is filled with great concepts, interesting characters, and a fast paced plot that keeps you guessing. What it needs more of is POLISH. In every possible way it needs more polish. A brief study of war and war tactics can make those sieges and battles even more epic. Some study of swordplay and fighting can make those conflicts more authentic and engaging. A fleshing out of those great concepts can truly make those ideas shine. My advice? Pull back on servicing the plot and let the characters be themselves and let us in on their world. I'd rather learn more about Rhyn, Dirham, and Carrick than constantly jump around to move the plot forward. Don't pull back too far on the mystery of the Kingmakers. At least tell us what they can do, what makes them better. That and a healthy dose of final edits by a professional would give this the 4/5 stars from me. Anyways still a good read and I look forward to the next (hopefully improved) adventure.

[Joshua R. Leuthold · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was impossible to finish. I read to 10%, which I feel is a generous amount of time to allow any book to hook me, but it failed to do more than make me perplexed. There is a small nugget of story here that could be amazing but it has been ruined completely by a barrage of very serious writing errors. I will detail all of the writing errors in the next two paragraphs so if you aren’t interested in that sort of detail skip to the fourth for my closer.

There was a constant reliance on exposition in dialogue. There were repeatedly erroneous uses of commas. My reading experience and flow was often broken completely due to missing words and apostrophes. The author introduced way too many place names in a short period of time. The abundance of place names caused me to go into a sort of reader “black out” where my brain decided since the names weren’t important enough to be given time by the author I must not need to care about them as a reader.

The vast majority of the descriptions were overly simple. There was a repeated clichéd use of tears and crying to display emotion. All of the action sequences were poorly described. A character named “the Lion King” was distracting due to the similarity to the Disney animated movie. This name choice caused levity in situations that were certainly not supposed to be funny. Lastly, the plot was poorly structured which caused severe pacing issues, and elements of the story were cliché to the point of being predictable.

This book needs some serious editing. It either wasn’t edited at all or didn’t go through enough of the right kinds of editing to have any improvements made to it. I’d strongly recommend the author read a few other fantasy novels by established authors to compare and contrast his own as the plot has promise but has failed in execution.

[Dom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't normally leave reviews, I still have to write a review for some of my favourite books. But when I saw the last review on this book, I had to write a review.

To not finish this book sounds weird to me! I finished the book yesterday and read the other two short stories and have been totally sucked in. Although I can see what the last review had said, sometimes it can get a little confusing. But the story is immense! From the first page you're thrown into the action, wondering why the things you read had happened.

Rhyn, the last Kingmaker and protector of all Vikinsa, is a seriously tested guy. Along with his best friend, Dirham, they try and save the Kingdoms from the conspiracy that's been going for years. The twist in the middle of the book took me COMPLETELY by surprise. There are so many varied and rich characters (one of my favourites is Carrick, a guy you can't help but love, even though he's a very evil guy).

There was only one thing that let it down for me: Sometimes, it moves too fast and I wanted to know more in depth about some of the characters. Then I read the other short stories the author published and they offer a little insight into some characters that haven't made an appearance yet.

I'm guessing the author left out some of the details to be revealed in the next book. There were questions I wanted to be answered, and now I have to wait for book two!

Hurry up James G. Pearson! I need to know!