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The Tempest Guild
The fragile peace in Talam is disintegrating. The northern ice pack is melting and the king of Sinistra plots to take advantage of the calamity to start a conflict.
Oblivious to the looming natural disaster and a coming war, street urchin Phaedra lives in the underbelly of the capital city. She has a unique and powerful ability, but she is too frightened to use it. Shunned by society, she longs to fit in. When two factions in the underworld clash, Phaedra is caught in the middle. Forced to defend her life, she finally unleashes her power with deadly consequences.
With Talam on the brink of doom, Phaedra is thrust into a conflict she doesn't understand. She must flee the city in possession of a plant that could change the course of history, but she can't do it alone.
With her antagonistic band in tow, Phaedra must find a way to escape Sinistra with hundreds of thousands of lives hanging in the balance.
Oblivious to the looming natural disaster and a coming war, street urchin Phaedra lives in the underbelly of the capital city. She has a unique and powerful ability, but she is too frightened to use it. Shunned by society, she longs to fit in. When two factions in the underworld clash, Phaedra is caught in the middle. Forced to defend her life, she finally unleashes her power with deadly consequences.
With Talam on the brink of doom, Phaedra is thrust into a conflict she doesn't understand. She must flee the city in possession of a plant that could change the course of history, but she can't do it alone.
With her antagonistic band in tow, Phaedra must find a way to escape Sinistra with hundreds of thousands of lives hanging in the balance.
156 pages, Paperback
Published June 2, 2018
3 people are currently reading
17 people want to read
About the author
David Mullin
5 books15 followersDavid began writing stories on his mother's typewriter when he was ten-years-old. Later, while working full time in the tech industry, David wrote three novels that eventually didn't get published. But the experience provided valuable experience in writing and editing. Skip ahead to 2015 where David quit the tech sector for good and started writing a fantasy series that is planned to span across five novels. In light of the popularity of shorter books in the modern age, the Talam Chronicles will consist of five novella-length books, more like a TV series than a standard book trilogy. The Tempest Guild is the first volume in this epic fantasy saga.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 14, 2018
Great Fantasy Story
This is a fantastic book. The characters are well-drawn, the world is well-built and creative, and the pacing is just right. I look forward to the next!
This is a fantastic book. The characters are well-drawn, the world is well-built and creative, and the pacing is just right. I look forward to the next!
June 16, 2018
The Tempest Guild is a surprisingly refreshing dose of original fantasy. It doesn't draw from the predefined races seen in other fiction, but rather fleshes out new sorts of races and worlds, and it does so in ways other than appearance. Every page of this book is balanced perfectly between showing you the world and telling you the story.
The story itself is pretty strong. Though the vague "apocalypse" type threat lurking in the future books hasn't proven itself to me yet, the characters themselves are very unique, engaging, and every one of them has an arc to go through and a purpose to meet. Though the first few chapters give the reader a dose of each main character, resulting in a slow start, the talk quickly picks up from there and manages to tell its own tale while setting up a foundation for this series, and yet still leaves some questions unanswered.
All is not sunshine and roses. Because of the book's short length and time spent on setup, I found that a few characters were short-changed in one way or another. They were fine characters, but did not have a chance to shine. Unnamed characters generally acted like stereotypical plot devices, and I was pulled out of the story by a couple of lines of dialogue here and there. On top of that, there were times that the writer needed to exposit some information about the world, and even the characters seemed frustrated with hearing this information again. (I had not heard it before, but calling attention to exposition pulls me out of the tale.)
Ultimately, the quick pace, unique world, strong action (it's in here for sure), and interesting characters keep me rooted in this book, and have earned a follow for the author. It is a well-polished work, and I really enjoyed it.
The story itself is pretty strong. Though the vague "apocalypse" type threat lurking in the future books hasn't proven itself to me yet, the characters themselves are very unique, engaging, and every one of them has an arc to go through and a purpose to meet. Though the first few chapters give the reader a dose of each main character, resulting in a slow start, the talk quickly picks up from there and manages to tell its own tale while setting up a foundation for this series, and yet still leaves some questions unanswered.
All is not sunshine and roses. Because of the book's short length and time spent on setup, I found that a few characters were short-changed in one way or another. They were fine characters, but did not have a chance to shine. Unnamed characters generally acted like stereotypical plot devices, and I was pulled out of the story by a couple of lines of dialogue here and there. On top of that, there were times that the writer needed to exposit some information about the world, and even the characters seemed frustrated with hearing this information again. (I had not heard it before, but calling attention to exposition pulls me out of the tale.)
Ultimately, the quick pace, unique world, strong action (it's in here for sure), and interesting characters keep me rooted in this book, and have earned a follow for the author. It is a well-polished work, and I really enjoyed it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews