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Few Far Fallen: Book One of the Rone Cycle
Even a tale of World’s End needs a beginning. Rone, once a continent of austere beauty and mighty nations, slides inexorably toward dissolution. The Dalin Clan, led by their conflicted Warlord, Gor, live in the shadow of their former power, their bloody, warlike culture, no proof against murder and treason. Rivals see in the Clan’s fading might an opportunity to settle ancient vendettas, even as unseen forces from beyond the World of Men look to usher in the end of days – from the Outside, where the Fallen abide. A Warlord who values life, even as his humanity is constantly denied; a crippled bard, blind to his inner beauty, worthy of every song; a Seer, unable to see what is coming, but asked to guide his people. They are among the company of the few, the far fallen, and they are all that stands against the chaos that seeks their end. Literary-leaning and tragic, beautifully described and compellingly written, “Few Far Fallen” presents a world as complex, flawed, and real as the characters that inhabit it. Discover why it is only against darkness that light can be seen, and why even endings have a beginning.
429 pages, Paperback
First published March 4, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 1, 2014
Surprising find at local Faery Fest. Picked this up on a whim at a festival. I am pleasantly surprised at how good this book has turned out to be. It is very tightly written and edited. There is nothing necessarily new to be found here, but Carson makes standard fantasy archetypes and themes feel fresh and crisp. The characters feel real and are easy to relate to and care about.
Carsons style reminds me at times of David Gemmell. I am very happy to welcome Mr Carson to my must read list of fantasy authors!
Carsons style reminds me at times of David Gemmell. I am very happy to welcome Mr Carson to my must read list of fantasy authors!
May 10, 2014
Great writing, puts you right there in the grisly action. (and the grizzly action.) If it ever becomes a movie many people will say, "the book was better."
February 3, 2015
If you're looking for the classic epic heroic fantasy, read this book. It will have everything you could possibly want. A detailed, rich world, both in terms of history as in terms of geography. Strong, well-defined characters, many of them likable, the rest so consistent, you can still relate to them, even if you don't like them.
If you're looking for fantasy without the prefix epic or heroic, this might not be the book for you. If you don't have the patience for the world-building that comes with the genre, you might consider the author's efforts of perfectly setting the scene before placing a character inside it as wordy and overly descriptive. Also, what one reader regards as heroic, another regards as foolish. That's the trouble with the genre, I suppose.
The only things that really bugged me were, one, the fact that the world and histories described are rather close to our own, and if I read fantasy, I like to escape fully, not only partially, two, the cliffhanger ending.
If you're looking for fantasy without the prefix epic or heroic, this might not be the book for you. If you don't have the patience for the world-building that comes with the genre, you might consider the author's efforts of perfectly setting the scene before placing a character inside it as wordy and overly descriptive. Also, what one reader regards as heroic, another regards as foolish. That's the trouble with the genre, I suppose.
The only things that really bugged me were, one, the fact that the world and histories described are rather close to our own, and if I read fantasy, I like to escape fully, not only partially, two, the cliffhanger ending.
September 6, 2014
This is a beautifully written epic story that has its own language and terminology. William Carson has created his own fantasy world with many characters that slowly come together in the Dalin fight against the Aosians who have ambushed their army, the Raiders, and created much devastation by burning and raiding their forests, towns and villages.
An epic story eloquently told by a skilful writer who has masterfully created a unique world of fantasy…
An epic story eloquently told by a skilful writer who has masterfully created a unique world of fantasy…
December 30, 2017
Spolers abound below, read at your own risk!
I'll start with a warning - the tone of this review is generally negative and sarcastic. This is because I'm generally disappointed with what I had hoped to be a good book. This is a classic example of a story not meeting its potential. There's excellent background and a detailed setting. There are some interesting characters and a plot that could have been interesting. The story is bogged down by a obtuse prose, a lot of uninteresting characters, a plot that turns out to be a confusing mess, and poor characterization of even the interesting characters. What this book needed, in my opinion, was a stronger editor and a few more rounds of revision.
Few Far Fallen is the story of the Dalin people fighting against a demon that their forefathers pissed off, I guess? And the Quoron people fighting against a demon that is trying to destroy the world, I guess? And the demons in question are in fact one and the same, I guess? I'm not clear on who the antagonist is here. Is it the demon, Saom? Is it those demon-worshipping cultists in the south (whose name I won't be bothered to look up)?
Spoiler-filled Summary
The book starts with the Dalin, a fairly standard group of germanic/celtic people in decline. It starts with some decent battle scenes. Sure, the troop numbers during these battle scenes make no sense, but the scenes were OK if you could look past that. Then there's some obvious betraying that happens, some seriously angsty navel-gazing among the Dalin (Gor in particular is excruciating in his self-doubt). The betrayer gets tracked down and resolved. The Dalin then bind a demon and do some tomb-robbing of a giant tower that suddenly appears in the City. Maybe I'm describing that incorrectly: the tower was always there, apparently, it's just not mentioned until the characters have to explore it and it takes them hours of stair-climbing to get to the top. Seriously. Maybe I just missed earlier mentions of it? Because to me, it seemed that, all of a sudden, they had to climb this giant tower that I hadn't heard about until just then. Anyway - then our heroes send one intrepid mage to the land of demon-worshipping southerners where he meets a sexy and super powerful sorceress and steals something then comes back. In the final act, the Dalin receive some Quoron as guests and set off on a quest. There's a vicious battle, which serves literally no purpose whatsoever, then the heroes step through a ****** and the story ends. Read book 2 to find out what happens!
The story also follows the Quoron, a nature-loving group of forest dwellers. Their home is threatened, they go to war, and when that turns out to be fruitless, they send an intrepid group of heroes to help the Dalin. Somehow, the fates of the two groups are intertwined.
Review and discussion
As you can tell from the tone of my summary, I was not particularly impressed. The characterization is adolescent - pretty much every character is either an adolescent or a psychotic killer. The strong characters in particular are filled with doubt and insecurity. OK, I get that the idea is to show these people as flawed and relatable, but that's not how most of them come across. Probably 90% of them just seem like juvenile and immature teens. The jarring flashbacks or interludes into their backgrounds are also not particularly welcome since they basically serve to answer questions that the reader isn't asking and doesn't care about. Seriously. Who gives a sh*t that the mother of the assassin-twins is dead? Or that Nesta has a family that she's neglecting? If those items had any bearing on the plot whatsoever, or in the characters' stories, those background items might be relevant. Otherwise, fluff like that just reads as filler. Seriously. If Nesta's neglect caused her family to die and forced a change in her character, that would have potential. But what does the tension at home lead to? Dark circles under her eyes, I guess. Otherwise, not a damn thing.
Let me take a moment to slam the writing style too. I get that it's intended to be "literary-leaning". OK. The words used to describe a story should not push you out of the story. This is mostly to do with the vocabulary and word choice, although I suspect that the navel-gazing is a big part of why this book was described in this way. A thesaurus is a valuable tool but it should not be apparent when words have been chosen with a thesaurus. Maybe that's not even true and the author is a walking trove of archaic language. That still doesn't justify the poor word choice. This honestly had me thinking of Dan Abnett at times; a genre author notorious for using words that he found on Thesaurus.com. I've already bitched about the navel-gazing, so let me just reiterate how irritating it was.
On a positive note, there's clearly been a lot of background and world-building here. It doesn't quite come through as much as it could have, but it's evident. It's also clear that this is the first book of a planned trilogy, based on the slow burn of the plot. It probably should have been written as one big trilogy and published as a door-stopper, rather than being released as a cliff-hanger though.
This was a first novel and hopefully the author keeps at it and finds a stronger editor, or takes the advice of his editor if that editor is calling for more significant changes. I love seeing Canadian authors writing in the Fantasy genre and there were some cute nods to Erikson in Few Far Fallen that had me smirking when I saw them.
I would not recommend this book and I will not be reading any more books in this series. I would, however, read a future effort by this author unrelated to this series, even if it's within the same setting.
I'll start with a warning - the tone of this review is generally negative and sarcastic. This is because I'm generally disappointed with what I had hoped to be a good book. This is a classic example of a story not meeting its potential. There's excellent background and a detailed setting. There are some interesting characters and a plot that could have been interesting. The story is bogged down by a obtuse prose, a lot of uninteresting characters, a plot that turns out to be a confusing mess, and poor characterization of even the interesting characters. What this book needed, in my opinion, was a stronger editor and a few more rounds of revision.
Few Far Fallen is the story of the Dalin people fighting against a demon that their forefathers pissed off, I guess? And the Quoron people fighting against a demon that is trying to destroy the world, I guess? And the demons in question are in fact one and the same, I guess? I'm not clear on who the antagonist is here. Is it the demon, Saom? Is it those demon-worshipping cultists in the south (whose name I won't be bothered to look up)?
Spoiler-filled Summary
The book starts with the Dalin, a fairly standard group of germanic/celtic people in decline. It starts with some decent battle scenes. Sure, the troop numbers during these battle scenes make no sense, but the scenes were OK if you could look past that. Then there's some obvious betraying that happens, some seriously angsty navel-gazing among the Dalin (Gor in particular is excruciating in his self-doubt). The betrayer gets tracked down and resolved. The Dalin then bind a demon and do some tomb-robbing of a giant tower that suddenly appears in the City. Maybe I'm describing that incorrectly: the tower was always there, apparently, it's just not mentioned until the characters have to explore it and it takes them hours of stair-climbing to get to the top. Seriously. Maybe I just missed earlier mentions of it? Because to me, it seemed that, all of a sudden, they had to climb this giant tower that I hadn't heard about until just then. Anyway - then our heroes send one intrepid mage to the land of demon-worshipping southerners where he meets a sexy and super powerful sorceress and steals something then comes back. In the final act, the Dalin receive some Quoron as guests and set off on a quest. There's a vicious battle, which serves literally no purpose whatsoever, then the heroes step through a ****** and the story ends. Read book 2 to find out what happens!
The story also follows the Quoron, a nature-loving group of forest dwellers. Their home is threatened, they go to war, and when that turns out to be fruitless, they send an intrepid group of heroes to help the Dalin. Somehow, the fates of the two groups are intertwined.
Review and discussion
As you can tell from the tone of my summary, I was not particularly impressed. The characterization is adolescent - pretty much every character is either an adolescent or a psychotic killer. The strong characters in particular are filled with doubt and insecurity. OK, I get that the idea is to show these people as flawed and relatable, but that's not how most of them come across. Probably 90% of them just seem like juvenile and immature teens. The jarring flashbacks or interludes into their backgrounds are also not particularly welcome since they basically serve to answer questions that the reader isn't asking and doesn't care about. Seriously. Who gives a sh*t that the mother of the assassin-twins is dead? Or that Nesta has a family that she's neglecting? If those items had any bearing on the plot whatsoever, or in the characters' stories, those background items might be relevant. Otherwise, fluff like that just reads as filler. Seriously. If Nesta's neglect caused her family to die and forced a change in her character, that would have potential. But what does the tension at home lead to? Dark circles under her eyes, I guess. Otherwise, not a damn thing.
Let me take a moment to slam the writing style too. I get that it's intended to be "literary-leaning". OK. The words used to describe a story should not push you out of the story. This is mostly to do with the vocabulary and word choice, although I suspect that the navel-gazing is a big part of why this book was described in this way. A thesaurus is a valuable tool but it should not be apparent when words have been chosen with a thesaurus. Maybe that's not even true and the author is a walking trove of archaic language. That still doesn't justify the poor word choice. This honestly had me thinking of Dan Abnett at times; a genre author notorious for using words that he found on Thesaurus.com. I've already bitched about the navel-gazing, so let me just reiterate how irritating it was.
On a positive note, there's clearly been a lot of background and world-building here. It doesn't quite come through as much as it could have, but it's evident. It's also clear that this is the first book of a planned trilogy, based on the slow burn of the plot. It probably should have been written as one big trilogy and published as a door-stopper, rather than being released as a cliff-hanger though.
This was a first novel and hopefully the author keeps at it and finds a stronger editor, or takes the advice of his editor if that editor is calling for more significant changes. I love seeing Canadian authors writing in the Fantasy genre and there were some cute nods to Erikson in Few Far Fallen that had me smirking when I saw them.
I would not recommend this book and I will not be reading any more books in this series. I would, however, read a future effort by this author unrelated to this series, even if it's within the same setting.
December 30, 2014
A masterfully written epic with a multi layered culture of its own. Amazing!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews