Damian, a gifted magical engineer, and cardplayer, is on the verge of a better life. His thesis, poised to revolutionize the understanding of runes, is ruined by a corrupt priest and his hopes are stolen. Faced with his brother's conscription into a brutal army, Damian makes a desperate pact. To save his family, he must infiltrate the Empire's special forces and use his unorthodox skills to survive. Can he outwit the elite forces and rewrite his family's future, or will he get swept further into a savage rebellion?
The Heretic (Runes and Ruin book 1), the debut novel by Nathan R Allen, was published June 12, 2024. BooksGoSocial provided a galley for review.
Fantasy stories have always been in my wheelhouse, both as a reader and a writer. With an intriguing cover and description, I was interested to get in on the ground floor of a new series by a new author.
I have to admit that I had a very hard time clicking with this one. I got through almost half the book (250 out of 536 pages - a lot more than my usual 50 to 100 pages) to try to keep me interested, but it just was not sticking. Sadly, I have to move it to my did-not-finish pile; maybe I'll give it another shot later.
The narration is split between present-day Damian and alternating flashback chapters with his parents Rowin and Dawn that stretch as far back as seventeen years. The latter are there to give the reader foundational information regarding the conflicts with the church, a more dynamic way to show this rather than tell it all via info dumping or expository dialogue. For some reason, though, I didn't feel the urgency with them (since we know where both parents are come present-day). I felt that these put the brakes on the present day narration. Since the author planned for this to be a series right from the start, maybe these chapters might have served better as their own prequel novel to come later - once the reader felt some kind of connection to Rowin and Dawn and then wanted more of their story.
It is obvious that Allen put a lot of work into the worldbuilding which he parses out quite generously at points. The reader learns how the church is layered in with military rankings and structure. He also goes into great depth of the training the initiates face (a part I was actually into as it added several characters for Damian to play off) with an interesting subplot involving the chemical stimulant vival to push through the pain (a nice allegory to opioids, perhaps). But we also get a good bit about the card game Radiate which Damian is very good at (good enough to win money) as well as the vamp trade (prostitution). Again, all interesting ideas but it is a lot of a lot for a single book much less for a debut novel in a series.
If this book did not go through any kind of formal editing process on the publisher side, that might be why it fell off the rails for me. Editors can help to tighten a work, offer the tougher criticisms and encourage reworking to make a piece stronger.
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