Meriel Ahn Arkamai is dokkalfur, a dark elf, on the run from her past, and heading into a future she’s very unsure of. Going by the her preferred name Ahna, she has kept her true identity and magical abilities safely hidden away for fifty years. The world she lives on is called Terra, but she’s a Dwellunder by birth, feared and respected in equal measure.
The war which led to the Prince of Mal, Xandor Kun, becoming the Dark Lord Sharr, took everything from Ahna: her home, her family, her reason to be. So she left it all behind, with only her friend, the woman who calls her ‘sister’, Kairen, keeping her from straying into total despair. Ahna has, for years on end, spurned Kairen’s call to join the Resistance, but another encounter leads her back into the fold. Ahna isn’t accepted by all, though. Her race leaves others suspicious of her intentions, as Lord Sharr is a dark elf himself, but she gets by because Kairen and her husband David trust her. Ahna doesn’t have the luxury of time to settle in with her new kinfolk, because the Resistance is plotting a new attack, focussed on Bravoure City, the fabled City of Gold.
Valena D’Angelis is a new author, and she debuts with Tempest of Bravoure: Kingdom Ascent, an intriguing addition to the genre of epic fantasy fiction. I finished it over the course of four days, frantically swiping my Kindle to find out where her story was heading. Sure, it has most of the tropes of the genre front and centre: there’s a prophecy; there’s the heroine’s journey; there’s a dark lord to be vanquished; there are diverse races living on or beneath an Earth-like environment; and there are monsters — dragons to be precise. So far, there’s enough here for fans of JRR Tolkien, Terry Brooks, and Robert Jordan.
Valena pulls no punches when it comes to her action scenes; they’re bombastic in scale, and as violent as anything you’d read in modern fantasy. She inhabits her world well with a decent number of likeable characters, important to both plot and main character, that when a couple of them inevitably meet their end, you mourn them. It’s easy to root for Ahna, and while the villain of the piece can be a little boo-hiss from time to time, he has a reason to be who he is and do what he does.
A major subplot I found compelling was the relationship between Ahna and Cedric Rover, a shrike captain, who’s initial loathing of both himself and the dark elf evolves over the course of the book, in a couple of very surprising ways. In this book, secrets are everywhere, but family, in the end, is everything.
One thing I’d like to say, though, is the world of Terra is vast and well-populated. It appears to have a history that goes back eons, with events important to the overall story mentioned briefly and then we move on. I would have enjoyed this book more if it was longer. I know a lot of readers don’t enjoy massive tomes, but in the fantasy genre especially, world-building is a vital part of what makes fans like me really get into a story. Here, there’s a lot of telling without showing, and a part of me was disappointed that there was no deep dive into Terran history, politics, and magic systems. However, I hope in the forthcoming books, we’ll get more exploration.
I give Valena D’Angelis all the kudos in the world for putting her book out there. I know in my heart that she will get better with each novel she publishes. She has made a great start here, and I look forward to reading the second book in this series, Castaway, some time in the near future.
What I think About When I Think About Writing. 