The Destroyer by Michael-Scott Earle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Destroyer by Michael Scott-Earle is a story about a legendary warrior, awoken from centuries of slumber to help defeat a magical enemy from his past.
The Cover: I love the cover on this book and it is a great fit for the story itself. The book is listed as fantasy and the cover certainly places it into that Genre for me.
The Good Stuff: There is a great story here that pulled me in from the very start and kept me reading. In fact, I wanted to keep reading even though there were things about the story that I did not like (refer to ‘The Bad Stuff’ below). I loved the characters (except Paug, I found him to be a little annoying) and the author has created a great fantasy world where elves and humans are at war. The tone was quite dark, which I enjoyed, and quite sexual at times, which I was not expecting from a fantasy. The pacing was good, the book is well edited and the author is quite a competent writer, who I have no doubt will only improve as he progresses in his craft.
The Bad Stuff: I love fantasy and that is what I expected from this book, but at times it felt like a smutty romance novel. There is explicit sexual content within the pages that I was not expecting, after all, the book is billed as a fantasy novel. I also felt it was out of character, making it seem gratuitous. The author gives us details in the characters backstory showing a world where sexual promiscuity is commonplace and marriage is unheard of. Yet at this time, Kaiyer has betrothed himself to one woman and promised never to be with another? Fast forward to his re-awakening and Kaiyer is a horny devil who doesn’t understand the concept of marriage. It just didn’t gel for me.
I was confused by the change in point of view (POV) across the chapters and felt the need to be grounded in the POV character a lot sooner. That is, until I realised that each chapter heading is actually the POV character’s name and this method is carried through the whole of the book.
The author has a tendency to go into too much detail. This slowed the pace of the story and made it read a little like a step by step guide in places. On top of that I felt cheated at the end, there was no resolution. I understand that the use of a cliff-hanger is a good tool for an author to keep the reader turning the pages or buying the next book. The author has certainly used a great one at the end of this story, however, I would much prefer some kind of resolution with a cliff-hanger leading into the next book, than no resolution and a cliff-hanger which leaves me unsatisfied.
Overall I was conflicted over this book. The story was interesting and I really did enjoy it, but the cross-over in genres threw me and put me off. I was expecting a fantasy novel and got a cross between a fantasy and what I would call an explicit romance novel (though I don’t read romance, so it may just be classified differently). If the book had been labelled as such, I would have gone into it with a different mindset and been more accepting – If I had picked it up at all; romance is not my thing.
If you enjoy fantasy and romance you should love this, but if you are after a traditional type of fantasy novel you are going to be surprised and possibly even disappointed with some of the content. I’m giving this one a very tumultuous 3 out of 5 golden bookmarks.
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Allan Walsh writes Fantasy and Horror. If you’re looking for something new to read in these genres, why not check out his books here. You can also find his titles available in libraries.
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