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Pale Kings Special Edition (2012)

by Ben Galley(Favorite Author)

4.19 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

BenGalley.com

series

Emaneska

review 1: Ben Galley is a self published author who I met in my local Waterstones where he was promoting. I came away with a copy of his first book, The Written (he was a good salesman)and I've been following his work ever since. I love a bit of world building and I really enjoy reading what other people think up and create, and it's inspiring to see what Ben has created essentially from scratch.Pale Kings is the sequel to The Written that expands and explores the characters and world that were established in that book. The book fleshes out the world of Emaneska further with the inclusion of some nice maps that help the reader to place events, although I must admit bias here as I'm a sucker for fantasy world maps.The main protagonist in the series, the drug addicted mage Farden is a... more kind of medieval Snake Plissken and is at times, downright unsympathetic. Not that is a problem of course. The world of Emaneska isn't exactly Disney.The story picks up a few months after the climactic battle in The Written, with Farden searching for his lost uncle in the southern deserts. Then the main thread of the plot kicks in and Farden is faced with a very dark choice indeed.Saying anything more will give away too many spoilers, but suffice to say Ben Galley has produced another taut little thriller set in a nordic inspired fantasy world on teetering on the edge of the abyss.I'd recommend this author to fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and the The First Law books by Joe Abercrombie. Ben Galley is definitely a name to watch.
review 2: Much like "The Written", Ben Galley's second work is a passable and enjoyable story. I plan to read the third when it comes out. For an author Galley's age, this is a very good work. However, I think there is a lot of untapped potential here and I think some of his choices are sloppy. This is not meant to be cruel to Galley. After all, I read his first book when it was a free download on Amazon and it got me to buy his second. There are just a few writing choices that I think could be done differently and make his next work so much better.I will name two examples in brief and then end on a positive note.One, there are some bizarrely heavy-handed incidents of foreshadowing. Towards the end of the book, it shows a brief scene from a side character's point of view, and ends it with (paraphrasing and slightly exaggerating) "little did that person know their doom was soon at hand." Then it switches perspective to a main character who kills said side character. This was the worst offender by far. The rest were not bad, merely strange literary choices.Two, there are a few too many scenes from the point of view of "throw away" side characters. Galley does a good job making his main characters sympathetic, and writes much better scenes when working from their point of view, but uses side characters as a crutch to get around his choice of using limited perspective instead of omniscient perspective. Limited perspective is an excellent and appropriate choice for the type of story Galley tells, but I think he's afraid of not showing certain things happening. If I were to make one recommendation for the third book, it would be try to write a first draft solely from the point of view of a single character and see what happens.Perhaps I've been overly critical. I enjoyed reading this story and will look forward to the rest. For fans of standard fantasy fare, written with a stylistic flair and doing an excellent job avoiding the crutch of "my orcs and elves are just slightly different from Tolkien's", check out the Emaneska series. Galley is an author who shows a lot of promise and I am certain he will continue to improve as he progresses in his career. less

Download links for: Pale Kings Special Edition

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