Travel Reads: The Call of Prophecy

call of prophecy by Troy C. ReevesI have to tell ya, I’m torn about whether or not to recommend this book. It’s got some good points and it’s got its draw backs. So I guess I’ll just share my experience with it and let you judge for yourself.

Summary
The land of Caliyon is at a crossroads. The Seed of Corruption is rising and those on the side of the Light must stop it. The fae races … elves, dryads, treants, dwarves, dragons and elementals … are banding together and, finally making their presence known to the humans.

For it is with the humans that the war to create balance between light and dark will be fought. Both the Lightbringer and the Seed of Corruption are rising in the bodies of humans.

Who will win?

This is the first book in The Saga of Calilyon series of books by Troy C. Reeves. The publicist is quite anxious to get the book reviewed … I received two copies in the mail … but not anxious enough to communicate with potential reviewers … I got no response when I let them know that I received two copies and would be happy to return one.

This is a self-published work through iUniverse, but does have an editor … so some effort was put into creating a decent book. That said …

What Worked for Me
There are a lot of characters you need to follow, which can be challenging. But Troy does a good job of making the most important ones three dimensional enough that I could tell them apart.

Arimas, the Priest King, Zharra, the dragon and Farin Guilian, the Covenal of Lorenth on whose shoulders much of the story is laid, are all very well developed.

Also, when Troy is actually telling the story (more on that later), he tells it well. He’s a decent writer and has an understanding of basic story structure.

What Didn’t Work for Me
That said, at least in this book, he also likes to get bogged down in background details. I think I was about 200 pages into the book before the story actually started getting told.

What was happening during those first pages? Well, after starting with a little bit of action, Troy went into a lot of background about Caliyon, the fae races, the humans … basically giving the reader a history lesson of Caliyon.

Well, for me, I just wanted to read a story. I don’t really care about all that history. Just give me the history that is relevant to the story in the moment and leave the rest to either your notes or an appendix at the back of the book. People who are interested can read it there and those who aren’t don’t have to wade through it.

In this way, The Call of Prophecy reminded me of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. When I read that, I remember being bored stiff by the middle book … long passages of battles and wars and the story just didn’t seem to move forward.

In this book, Troy’s writing style hearkens back to vintage fantasy. So those who enjoy reading long passages about history and culture and other information that doesn’t move the story forward, will probably have no problem with this book. For me, it just made it harder to read and I ended up taking a little over two months to read this book.

That said, I still want to know what happens. The book ends on a cliff hanger, which one would expect from a “Book One”. The writing was good, so it wasn’t painful to read … it just got boring for long passages.

SCORE: 3 out of 5 Palm Trees Possible

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NOTE: Although I received this book free to review, that did not affect my opinion of the book. Read past reviews of books I’ve received for free and you’ll know I don’t hold my punches.

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About the author

As The Genre Traveler, Carma Spence loves to view the world through Genre-Coloured glasses. In other words, she sees the world through a lens of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, where trash cans can be Daleks in disguise and neighborhood forests can harbor faeries and sprites. Magic realism is real! Or at least you can choose to see the world that way to add to the fun and awe of life.

3 comments on “Travel Reads: The Call of Prophecy

  1. Troy C. Reeves

    Hey there Carma. Thank you for the honest review of my book. As it was my first work, I know there is lots of room for me to improve and hone my talent as I continue with this trilogy and onto stories in the future. Your critical points are well received and have not been new points of critique so I know where to focus my attention during the editing of subsequent novels and your positive points reinforce my belief that I do have talent and there is hope for a new author like me.

    For your information/interest, everyone who owns The Call of Prophecy in its current form will be holding the collector’s edition as I am done with the world of self-publishing (long and painful story) and deals are underway with a traditional publishing house where the hope is to have The Call of Prophecy significantly ‘thinned’ and reeditted along with the complete manuscript for The Shadow Unleashed and the work in progress, Twinning of Fate. Thanks again for taking the time to explore Caliyon and for your review.

    Cheers,

    Troy

  2. Carma Spence

    Congratulations, Troy! Good to hear. You definitely have talent … you just need a good editor who can polish up that diamond in the rough. 🙂

  3. Tuff Lian

    I would say FINISH polishing that “diamond”… the way I hear it, you should have seen the manuscript before it was edited! Give the poor editor some credit for goodness sakes; it’s pretty immature to blame faults on an editor; a decent author would have known 200 pages of background is quite excessive (I mean, any reader knows that!) and wouldn’t have insisted upon putting it there in the first place. In all fairness, all you’re saying is that she faulted only in timidity, and should’ve critiqued you harder.

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