Status Updates From The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

The prose is so beautiful and strange I love it

HOLY.SHIT. 😳

Sybel, baby, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? This can’t end well; there are fewer than 120 pages left. Nooo! Damn, old-school Fantasy was hardcore.

After having read a barrage of Fantasy and Romantasy, where the MMC breaks the FMC’s heart by choosing crown/kingdom/revenge over her, it’s SO RARE to see the MMC in this book putting his foot down and refuses to let his bloodthirsty older brothers use and exploit her (well, her powers) as a weapon of war.

Sybel blinked at the broken pieces in her hand. Then she said, “I will bring you bones, if you wish. I will bring you a grinning skull, if I can find the brain beneath it.”

I can’t put this down. Power is the overarching theme that is explored and investigated from so many different angles.
Such a breath of fresh air—we get themes and character arcs. Nobody starts out perfect. The author doesn’t care that you don’t like them immediately.
Modern books have tropes, old-school books have themes.

I am CAPTIVATED and UTTERLY CHARMED.
People who complain about the speech being “stilted” are misinformed. They’re so used to crappy Fantasy with poor world-building, where characters speak in 21st century lingo, that when they see REAL Fantasy speech, they call it “unnatural.”

Straight from the golden age of Fantasy. They don’t write like this anymore, that’s for sure. It’s so good! Different from what’s out there today. Published in 1974, this was Patricia A. McKillip’s debut novel, which was released when she was only 26 years old. It went on to become an award-winning and influential Fantasy.