Wilmurin: Land of the Druids

The Druid Chronicles #1

by H.J. Cronin

The darkness is coming.
Wilmurin was once home to a race of vile and sadistic elves who ruled over the humans (druids), until one day, one human led the druids into a rebellion against their elvish overseers. A long war followed and the humans won, the elves became extinct and the druids ruled supreme. As a reward for their hard fought victory, the druid god, Drugar, granted the leading families of the clans the power to become shape-shifters, using the animal that represents that clan as a different skin; larger than average bears, wolves, giant black widow spiders and more.
Five hundred years later a darkness is about to come to Wilmurin that has not been seen for decades. The druids are unprepared for this coming darkness, a blood thirsty vampire lord called Count Darkool leading a vast army of undead. The only one who can stop him is Johan, a man thrust into Wilmurin from our world. Johan and new found friends and allies must find a way to stop Count Darkool before it is too late. War is coming.
H.J. Cronin presents to you his debut novel; Wilmurin: Land of the Druids, which is a fast paced, action packed epic fantasy that introduces readers to a new world. A young world that is only just starting out.

*READER REVIEWS*

"I thought this book was brilliant. I particularly loved the concept of the book as a whole" ★★★★

"Great Read! Action packed and full of surprises!" ★★★★★

"A good first novel" ★★★★★

"The story was actually pretty solid and the author does a good job of balancing description and letting the reader use their own imagination. Overall the story and the writing were pretty good and I look forward to seeing how the author grows and develops." ★★★★

"New author has potential. Found it hard to put the book down. Worth a read. Cronin differently one for the future." ★★★★

"Quite an enjoyable first novel from this author" ★★★★

Genres: Fantasy

328 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 31, 2014

About the author

My name is Hamish, I love to read historical fiction and fantasy books.

I live in Essex, England with my wife, beautiful son and cat. I used to live in London but prefer the beautiful scenery that Essex has to offer. I began writing in January 2014 but have wanted to write for many years, I just never got around to putting pen to paper. The Druid Chronicles is the first of many planned series. Wilmurin: Land of the Druids being my debut novel. I also write short horror stories, some of which are based on true events.

I love to hear any feedback from people who have read my books. Be it good or bad, good feedback drives me and bad reviews help me to improve myself. I write for the thrill and for even one person to read one of my books gives me a great feeling.

Thanks for taking the time to read this! Bye for now!

Reviews

[Mē-chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wilmurin - an epic fantasy about druids and vampires.

2.5 stars, rounded to 3 for purpose of rating.

Wilmurin starts when our main character Johan is transported from the WWII setting of D-day like battlefield into a magical land of Wilmurin. We find out that our world is nothing but a dream world created by a great wizard Eagle in order to stash Johan away, because basically everybody is after him. Johan is the last of his kind and only man capable of ending the threat that comes to Wilmurin in the form of a vampiric lord Darkool.

The concept of the book is very cool. I don't come across many druid fantasy books (although recently that kind of a read has been popping up in my reading with Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series, but that's a different beastie altogether), so the idea of druids and druidic magic appeals to me. In this book main magic of the druids is in transforming into their main animal form. I didn't notice they were capable of making spells, aside from Eagle and Darkool.

Another good point about this book is its fast paced action. I've not been bored with it at all, there are many battles to keep the action rolling. There's also a bit of backstabbing politics that basically starts things off.

So why only 2.5 stars? Well because despite having a cool concept and plenty of action this book also has fair amount of problematic points.

The weakest point for me were the characters and they are the most important to me in any book.
Characters are either completely good or completely evil, with the exception of one of the brothers in Bear druid clan, who's a bit on the grey side.
Why is this a problem for me? Motivation. I don't find their motivation for their behavior believable at all. It takes me out of the story when the character is pure goodness personified or so evil with no hinges whatsoever.
It makes their reasoning, motivation and behavior too simple and the characters end up one dimensional.
Great characters, be they good or evil have internal conflicts which makes their behavior more nuanced and more interesting to read about. Even Sauron wasn't pure evil always. Quite opposite.

Another thing that really bothered me is the relationship between the characters. In the book Johan ends up with a little party that is helping him on his mission. He's already been in Wilmurin for a month, but that's a very short time. In his party everybody acts like they have been best friends forever, everybody loves everybody and they would literally die for one another. Such devotion, such loyalty and love for one another is simply unrealistic. But because of such setup I literally cringed at some of their conversations professing true friendship and eagerness to self sacrifice, considering they know each other such a short time.

On the other points the writing style is a bit on the simple style which I don't mind so much seeing this is a debut book. The mission Johan is on can be quite RPG like, which is a miss for me, but some people might like it. There's also quite a bit of telling, little less showing especially in regard of how beautiful Wilmurin is.

Interesting thing...before the story starts, we are given a short history of Wilmurin which serves as a kind of a framework for events that will happen. I never encountered that before. Usually authors give bits and pieces of history throughout the book via conversations and back stories.

Finally,read the book if you like druids, vampires and elves (yes there are elves here) and action.

[Yannick Serres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brought me back in the days!

I was used to play Diablo and Warcraft and that book totally got me.

I loved the fictional and imaginative world of Wilmurin. The story has a good guideline.

The Count Darkool has been resurrected by a necromancer, but Johan, the last of his line, will give hope to the population of Wilmurin.

It caught my attention from the beginning and held it till the end. I wasn't expecting much, but been surprised. The cover is nice and the story is perfect.

Thanks to H.J. Cronin for this book I received through Goodreads giveaways.

[Dianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a slow read, but once the action began so too did the story. The battle of Wilmurin is has begun. Can the last Night Hunter be able to defeat the Vampires who threaten to take over the world as they know it? If you enjoyed reading Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, you will enjoy this book.

This is NOT a girly read and I would not recommend it unless you enjoy sword fights and epic battles. I enjoyed the book

[C Muggleton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing story and a cool concept. I loved the action scenes and found the bad guys fantastic. 4* because some of the good guys, not all, seem a bit generic which hopefully Cronin will improve in the next book!

[Sarah Ehinger · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received this as a goodreads giveaway and was super excited about the opportunity to read it. The story line was ok, but largely contained pieces of other fantasy genre sits doors sprouts stories that were woven together on a unique way. What largely made my review so poor was the lack of character development. The great story tellers do a great job of portraying the inner turmoil, indecision, and human qualities of the characters. I found it quite jarring that in a heart wrenching situation what a character would be torn at best and at worst questioning all beliefs and values simply "had tears in his eyes" after being told his wife and children and city would need to be abandoned for a nebulous "greater good". This was just one of many moments where I was pulled out of the story due to the lack of detail provided to describe what the character was feeling. I really wanted to like it, but couldn't.

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Land of the Druids was a good debut novel for Cronin - I liked the concept and the opening up of a new land. The land is rich in history and in stories to tell.

But the writing was hard for me to get into. Cronin has a dry style that tends to the exposition of facts rather than painting a picture for the reader. Plus there were too many deus ex machina's for me to be able to really get into the book.

*I got this book through GoodRead's Giveaways - an excellent source of interesting books!

[Samantha Gunning]

I won this book via Goodreads First Reads Giveaway. I received an autographed paperback copy.