Book Review: The Book of Deacon

One of the most pleasant surprises to me in acquiring first the Android Kindle app, and then a full Kindle device, was the discovery of so many fantasy books available for free through Amazon.com. At the same time, I've learned that while there's a lot of "chaff" and the "wheat" can be tricky to sift out. Some of the titles I've downloaded were barely worth the effort. It's also interesting to me that offering the first book of a series for free in Kindle format is apparently a gimmick for hooking readers to pay for the rest of the series. Not a bad deal, given that most of the following titles I've seen tend to go for only $2.99 or so. "The Book of Deacon" is one of the good free titles, first in a series, convincing me to spend a little money on the following books in the series.

Author Joseph Lallo tells most of the story from the perspective of a woman on the run, Myranda. She's in a struggle for survival, trying to keep her opposition to a war that's raged for over a century to herself, but not succeeding very well. Moving from town to town as her welcome runs out, she stumbles into an adventure that pulls her along to uncover unexpected truths about herself, the war and the world she lives in.

In any fantasy novel the source and methods of magic are of interest. For the world in which Myranda lives, spirits, crystals, mysticism and meditation appear to work together to enable supernatural effects. There are elemental magics as well as white, grey and black magic. Rather than the colors of these latter fields of magic indicating alignment, they signify the effects. White magic is healing and restorative, grey is of neutral impact, and black is destructive. None of these are inherently good or bad in moral or ethical terms.

This story really moves along. The first couple of times the narrative shifted from Myranda to some far-off general it was disconcerting, but as I continued reading I realized it was necessary. The protagonist goes from one event and experience to the next, and as I neared the end of the book I was impressed at how much story had actually been told.

The author of The Book of Deacon has a new fan with me, and I've already bought the second book, "The Great Convergence."

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See Also:
Book Review: Smallworld