"I think that ‘A Clatter of Chains’ and the rest of the series will provide hours of entertainment for fans of high and epic fantasy."
‘A Clatter of Chains’ by A Van Wyck is the first in ‘The Waking Worlds’ epic fantasy series which sees ancient magic return to a theocracy, with a host of long forgotten threats fast on its heels. In long flowing chapters we meet Marco, an orphan, a novice who resides at Temple and is studying under the priests there, who is prone to bad luck and finds himself out of his depth on a diplomatic mission. We also meet Jiminy, a thief who is forced to flee his home to evade preternatural monsters, set on a path that could lead to a destruction of the Empire. The novel begins in interesting circumstances and as a reader you are at once given a brief history of the Heli Empire and placed in a world of magic and enchantments. I finished the prologue with lots of questions and I was eager to find the answers for them. I liked the world-building aspect of this fantasy novel, it seemed natural to me, with some of the foundation level information provided early on as part of Marco’s lessons. I read eager to find out whether Jiminy and Marco would be connected. The storyline twists and makes you wait for answers but it sets a pace that I enjoyed, fast enough to keep me engaged but not so fast that I couldn’t keep the events straight in my head. Ending on an intriguing epilogue that hints at what might happen in the next book, I think that ‘A Clatter of Chains’ and the rest of the series will provide hours of entertainment for fans of high and epic fantasy.
Charlotte Walker, A LoveReading Ambassador
| Primary Genre | Fantasy |
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