Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster is the titular warriorborn member of the Spire Albion nobility. He has much more advanced senses and abilities. He is sent on a special reconnaissance mission to a colony spire that has very suddenly stopped answering all call. He is sent with three warriorborn prisoners as his backup. This, of course, is to create plausible deniability should the mission fail … which it most certainly will.
The book is billed as a Cinder Spires novella, but at only 137 pages (compared to book one’s 650 pages and book two’s 610 pages) it comes across as more a short story than a novella. But this is okay because there’s enough action and story from start to finish to satisfy most readers.
I’ve admittedly been slightly less than enamored with this series – I’m not a huge fan of epic fantasy which the Cinder Spires books seems to be. Mostly because I’m not patient enough for the format – I want more character and action instead of history, plotting, and description. Being a novella, this book does skip right to the action and relies mightily on character to see it through, thus happily satisfying my ADD attention span.
Passages within the book were outright fun, such as being chased through city streets by a dragon. Yes, a dragon.
Frankly, this book reminded me much more of some of my favorite fantasy authors such as Rod Duncan or Robert Jackson Bennett than it did the two books already in the series.
But it’s not just the action sequences here that work. It’s the character of Benedict and how he manages his mission that not only made this book so much fun, but reinvigorated me to the series.
Oh … and this also manages to include the two most necessary items in modern fantasies … dragons, and talking cats. Yup, it’s sure-fire bestseller with talking cats!
Looking for a good book? Warriorborn by Jim Butcher is book 1.5 in the Cinder Spires series – a novella that packs more action and excitement than either of the first two books.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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Warriorborn
author: Jim Butcher
series: The Cinder Spires #1.5
publisher: Podium Publishing
ISBN: 9781039452442
paperback, 137 pages
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