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Shards
There's a secret locked in the Mistwood Vault.
So many have tried to find their way in and failed, the broadsheets call it Hammering the Vault.
Years after the last most desperate fool has given up, a clue is found in the journal of a man that might have been present for its mysterious construction in the days when the island was lost to the rest of the world. A piece of the key is finally found.
The hunt is on! A dragon alchemist, a smuggler looking to turn his life around, and a ruthless mage race to gather the shards of the key and unravel the secret of the Mistwood Vault.
If you like Pirates of the Caribbean and high fantasy adventures, you'll love Shards!
Join the hunt today!
So many have tried to find their way in and failed, the broadsheets call it Hammering the Vault.
Years after the last most desperate fool has given up, a clue is found in the journal of a man that might have been present for its mysterious construction in the days when the island was lost to the rest of the world. A piece of the key is finally found.
The hunt is on! A dragon alchemist, a smuggler looking to turn his life around, and a ruthless mage race to gather the shards of the key and unravel the secret of the Mistwood Vault.
If you like Pirates of the Caribbean and high fantasy adventures, you'll love Shards!
Join the hunt today!
311 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 14, 2019
3 people are currently reading
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 20, 2019
Been too long since I reviewed a book, I've been trying to read Shards since the start of July and finally finished it as of the night of writing this review. Small unknown indie books are always a bit of a gamble but Shards featured dragons so the choice was obvious for me. Overall I absolutely loved this book and felt very engaged by it. That's not to say it was completely spotless however, it's clear Duvall could have used an editor given some of the errors I found throughout the book. Nothing that ruined the book for me but happened enough times to be noticeable with the little grammatical errors or inconsistencies. As always with my reviews, I will be breaking it up into categories based on what I liked about the book and the issues I found with it. I'll try to avoid spoilers but no guarantees they won't accidentally happen.
What I Enjoyed:
The Setting:
I absolutely adored the setting of Shards given it's so many of the things I love in a fantasy story. It's an old school high fantasy swashbuckling affair but done extremely well to avoid complete cliches and does have some original features. The most prominent detail of the world being the 'shardwalls' that give the book its title, being magical constructs that divide the world into 'shards' that can only be crossed through the use of special magic utilized by what's known as the Bridger's Guild. I'd say the tech level is somewhere around mid 19th century given the descriptions of things like the airships but as I always say magic really screws up the tech tree. This world is inhabited by your typical fantasy fare of humans, dwarves, gryphons and of course dragons the typically seen ones in story called 'luminarians.' The luminarians provide a unique take to the dragon, they are about half the height of standard humans in setting and are treated as pigeons to be shooed away and much worse despite being known to be sapient beings that can speak. This level of discrimination really makes one cringe but it provides a darkness that keeps things grounded in a way.
In addition, Duvall does something in book that I find extremely clever as a world building convention. At the start of every chapter, he provides an excerpt of a book, personal log, or story in universe that helps to expand the world without bogging down into the dreaded info dump. I think this a brilliant way of fleshing out a world and think that more writers should try doing something similar. He also comes up with original turns of phrase like 'hammering the Vault' which in universe is a shorthand for a futile endeavor, it's the little details like that that really help a story pop and stand out.
Characters:
The highlight of the book for me and what truly made it great in my opinion, characters after all are what truly make a story happen. Shards takes the third person approach to narrating and follows two main PoVs although it sprinkles in a few others here and there to provide extra context to events so the reader is not left in the dark. The main characters being Sapphire Nightsong the luminarian alchemist and Timothy Binks the smuggler.
Sapphire is a dragon with a chip on her shoulder due to the discrimination that she has suffered over the years, the worst being essentially kicked out of a prestigious university. But yet she never allows this to weigh her down, she is very much in control of her own life and very active in it. We learn that she is travelling the world as a means of finding a cure for her mate Dawn's mysterious malady that is slowly killing him. Naturally as she is doing this, she gets roped into the larger events of the plot. I loved her character as a whole, she is that right blend of characteristics of having a sharp edge but yet a very good heart. Sapphire has a biting tongue and quick mind and also truly cares about her people and her mate. Her relationship with her husband was one of the most heartwarming aspects of the entire book for me, you can really tell that they love each other. To me the race against time really adds some good drama to her story since she isn't sure how much time her mate has left since it's clear he's slowly getting worse, it really makes you root for her and hope she's successful.
Our other PoV Timothy certainly has his hands full throughout the book. His arc starts with him and his crew rescuing the survivors of a failing ship where he finds the journal of a long dead mage that was present when the world was shattered centuries ago which truly kicks off the overarching plot of the book and starts the hunt for the legendary treasure of the Mistwood. Along with the book, he gains an undyingly loyal companion in the young gryphon Aebyn. Their friendship is essentially the platonic counterpart to Sapphire and Dawn's and every bit as heartwarming given how they support each other through the hard times that occur. Timothy has to deal with the responsibility of guiding Aebyn and looking after his crew, all the while suffering a moral crisis when the costs of his old friend Christopher's expedition start to really pile up over time. I personally think his internal struggle is very well written and you can feel him trying to figure out what the right course of action for his own morality and the people he cares about.
Dramatic Irony:
This is a minor thing overall but I think it's a nice touch. Over the course of the story you learn that some of the important players in the story share the same names with historical characters in setting. Now the characters don't realize the significance or identity of the people they are talking to but the readers certainly will if they are paying attention.
Pacing:
This is the other thing I really like about the book, the sense of escalation as the story goes on. It starts off as fairly slice of life with the characters going about their daily lives and slowly as one event after another begins to occur the stakes become higher and higher as personal tragedies and hardships begin to really take their toll. It really makes you actually fear for the characters and if everyone will be alright by the end if even still alive.
Issues:
Editing:
As I mentioned in the introduction, Duvall really could have benefited from having an editor look over his writing. There were a lot of little things like adding extra words such as 'the the,' some of the sentences seemed a bit wordy, and the occasional straight up misspelling. Like I said, as a whole it didn't break the book for me but they still happened enough of the time to be noticeable.
The Worldbuilding:
I know what you're thinking 'you just gushed about the setting earlier, what's the problem' but let me explain a bit. The book makes it clear it is a very large world out there filled with all sort of fantastic beings like the avian Tintori or the centaur Megashi but yet we never see a single such being throughout the entire story. I get you can only fit so much into a book without it being extraneous but I still feel a bit cheated since we just ended up seeing the old standbys of conventional fantasy for the most part. This is especially apparent in discussing the gryphons where it is mentioned that Aebyn is what's known as a 'lighthound.' There were a couple of other breeds of gryphon mentioned such as 'wind hopper' and 'dusk tracer' but quite frankly by the end of the story I have no idea what the real differences were besides a lighthound's glowing eyes apparently. That extends to the nature of the gryphons as a whole, I couldn't tell if they're artificially created beings like the narrative seems to hint at in terms like the dusk tracers being 'bred by humans' or if they're a natural species that just is very intertwined with the humans. In the final words, Duvall claims he plans to revisit the world and characters which I really hope he does and uses that to expand the setting and show us the things he wasn't able to in Shards alone.
The Ending:
This ties in with my criticism of the worldbuilding given things happened that were never fully explained in terms of ramifications or why something happened. Don't get me wrong it was a very sweet ending overall but it feels like it wasn't fully elaborated on. I'm assuming and hoping it would become more clear in the future if the author writes more stories in the same setting.
Conclusion:
Overall I greatly enjoyed Shards and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for an old school high fantasy adventure. The world was interesting and the characters felt very real and made you care about them. I really am hoping Duvall writes more books in this setting given I want to know what happens next with the characters like Sapphire, Dawn, and Timothy. I believe this is the start of something very promising and am eager to come along for the ride on this crazy airship of
What I Enjoyed:
The Setting:
I absolutely adored the setting of Shards given it's so many of the things I love in a fantasy story. It's an old school high fantasy swashbuckling affair but done extremely well to avoid complete cliches and does have some original features. The most prominent detail of the world being the 'shardwalls' that give the book its title, being magical constructs that divide the world into 'shards' that can only be crossed through the use of special magic utilized by what's known as the Bridger's Guild. I'd say the tech level is somewhere around mid 19th century given the descriptions of things like the airships but as I always say magic really screws up the tech tree. This world is inhabited by your typical fantasy fare of humans, dwarves, gryphons and of course dragons the typically seen ones in story called 'luminarians.' The luminarians provide a unique take to the dragon, they are about half the height of standard humans in setting and are treated as pigeons to be shooed away and much worse despite being known to be sapient beings that can speak. This level of discrimination really makes one cringe but it provides a darkness that keeps things grounded in a way.
In addition, Duvall does something in book that I find extremely clever as a world building convention. At the start of every chapter, he provides an excerpt of a book, personal log, or story in universe that helps to expand the world without bogging down into the dreaded info dump. I think this a brilliant way of fleshing out a world and think that more writers should try doing something similar. He also comes up with original turns of phrase like 'hammering the Vault' which in universe is a shorthand for a futile endeavor, it's the little details like that that really help a story pop and stand out.
Characters:
The highlight of the book for me and what truly made it great in my opinion, characters after all are what truly make a story happen. Shards takes the third person approach to narrating and follows two main PoVs although it sprinkles in a few others here and there to provide extra context to events so the reader is not left in the dark. The main characters being Sapphire Nightsong the luminarian alchemist and Timothy Binks the smuggler.
Sapphire is a dragon with a chip on her shoulder due to the discrimination that she has suffered over the years, the worst being essentially kicked out of a prestigious university. But yet she never allows this to weigh her down, she is very much in control of her own life and very active in it. We learn that she is travelling the world as a means of finding a cure for her mate Dawn's mysterious malady that is slowly killing him. Naturally as she is doing this, she gets roped into the larger events of the plot. I loved her character as a whole, she is that right blend of characteristics of having a sharp edge but yet a very good heart. Sapphire has a biting tongue and quick mind and also truly cares about her people and her mate. Her relationship with her husband was one of the most heartwarming aspects of the entire book for me, you can really tell that they love each other. To me the race against time really adds some good drama to her story since she isn't sure how much time her mate has left since it's clear he's slowly getting worse, it really makes you root for her and hope she's successful.
Our other PoV Timothy certainly has his hands full throughout the book. His arc starts with him and his crew rescuing the survivors of a failing ship where he finds the journal of a long dead mage that was present when the world was shattered centuries ago which truly kicks off the overarching plot of the book and starts the hunt for the legendary treasure of the Mistwood. Along with the book, he gains an undyingly loyal companion in the young gryphon Aebyn. Their friendship is essentially the platonic counterpart to Sapphire and Dawn's and every bit as heartwarming given how they support each other through the hard times that occur. Timothy has to deal with the responsibility of guiding Aebyn and looking after his crew, all the while suffering a moral crisis when the costs of his old friend Christopher's expedition start to really pile up over time. I personally think his internal struggle is very well written and you can feel him trying to figure out what the right course of action for his own morality and the people he cares about.
Dramatic Irony:
This is a minor thing overall but I think it's a nice touch. Over the course of the story you learn that some of the important players in the story share the same names with historical characters in setting. Now the characters don't realize the significance or identity of the people they are talking to but the readers certainly will if they are paying attention.
Pacing:
This is the other thing I really like about the book, the sense of escalation as the story goes on. It starts off as fairly slice of life with the characters going about their daily lives and slowly as one event after another begins to occur the stakes become higher and higher as personal tragedies and hardships begin to really take their toll. It really makes you actually fear for the characters and if everyone will be alright by the end if even still alive.
Issues:
Editing:
As I mentioned in the introduction, Duvall really could have benefited from having an editor look over his writing. There were a lot of little things like adding extra words such as 'the the,' some of the sentences seemed a bit wordy, and the occasional straight up misspelling. Like I said, as a whole it didn't break the book for me but they still happened enough of the time to be noticeable.
The Worldbuilding:
I know what you're thinking 'you just gushed about the setting earlier, what's the problem' but let me explain a bit. The book makes it clear it is a very large world out there filled with all sort of fantastic beings like the avian Tintori or the centaur Megashi but yet we never see a single such being throughout the entire story. I get you can only fit so much into a book without it being extraneous but I still feel a bit cheated since we just ended up seeing the old standbys of conventional fantasy for the most part. This is especially apparent in discussing the gryphons where it is mentioned that Aebyn is what's known as a 'lighthound.' There were a couple of other breeds of gryphon mentioned such as 'wind hopper' and 'dusk tracer' but quite frankly by the end of the story I have no idea what the real differences were besides a lighthound's glowing eyes apparently. That extends to the nature of the gryphons as a whole, I couldn't tell if they're artificially created beings like the narrative seems to hint at in terms like the dusk tracers being 'bred by humans' or if they're a natural species that just is very intertwined with the humans. In the final words, Duvall claims he plans to revisit the world and characters which I really hope he does and uses that to expand the setting and show us the things he wasn't able to in Shards alone.
The Ending:
This ties in with my criticism of the worldbuilding given things happened that were never fully explained in terms of ramifications or why something happened. Don't get me wrong it was a very sweet ending overall but it feels like it wasn't fully elaborated on. I'm assuming and hoping it would become more clear in the future if the author writes more stories in the same setting.
Conclusion:
Overall I greatly enjoyed Shards and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for an old school high fantasy adventure. The world was interesting and the characters felt very real and made you care about them. I really am hoping Duvall writes more books in this setting given I want to know what happens next with the characters like Sapphire, Dawn, and Timothy. I believe this is the start of something very promising and am eager to come along for the ride on this crazy airship of
June 14, 2019
A great introduction to what promises to be a very fun and interesting world. Can't wait to read more about the adventures of Saphire and Timothy Binks.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews