The Winds of Khalakovo

A Song of Ice and Fire meets Earthsea in this highly original novel

"The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley P. Beaulieu is awesome epic fantasy with a Russian Czarist slant by an award-winning author. A Song of Ice and Fire meets Earthsea in this highly original and exciting novel set in the Grand Duchy of Anuskaya, an archipelago of bitterly cold islands where flying ships soar on dangerous winds.

"Life in the bleak islands was already difficult before the wasting disease blighted the land and started killing the inhabitants. No one knows what has caused the blight, or that Prince Nikandr Khalakovo has been afflicted by it. Nikandr has been hiding the illness for months and his betrothed, the strong-willed Atiana Vostroma does not realize that she will marry a dying man who is in love with a darkly beautiful Aramahn woman, Rehada, who keeps many secrets from her aristocratic lover.

"Atiana, Rehada, and Nikandr are all strong point of view characters who power the plot of this fast-paced novel full of spectacular imagery and emotional punch. The book is rooted with realistic characters in a harsh world that can only be tamed by the elemental magic practiced by the Landless Aramahn, who specialize in air, earth, fire, water and the stuff of life as they wander the world seeking knowledge and wisdom. Also fascinating were the Matri, the matriarchs of the great families who submerge themselves in freezing water and leave their bodies to navigate the dangerous aether and help guide the wind ships that follow the ley lines that connect the islands.

"Winds is a page-turner with twists, turns and palpable danger as Nikandr risks everything to protect a young Aramahn boy, an autistic savant, who may be the key to healing the blight. Atiana struggles to stay loyal to her family and the man she is supposed to marry. Rehada is very conflicted and perhaps the most interesting of the three, especially when she uses her magic to bond with the suurahezhan, or fire spirit.

"Civil war and the violent Maharraht, a splinter faction of the noble Aramahn, provide plenty of conflict as Nikandr, Atiana, and Rehada fight for what they love in this exceptional novel.

"Highly recommended."
-Paul Genesse,
Author of The Golden Cord

17 out of 19 people found this review helpful.

Intelligent and elegant, but sometimes confusing

I loved the complexity of this book, as well as the author's imagination and writing style. The book took a good few chapters to settle in to a plot, but the character development was good and I did manage to figure out who was who. I wonder if the paper version is formatted differently, but the Nook version lacks any graphical notice of a jump through time, as is customary. From one paragraph to another, you will find yourself following a different character or jumping ahead in time, which is one thing that makes this book a bit difficult to follow.

9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.

Very Well Done - Throws you in the deep end and makes you happy to swim

The reader starts this book by seeing a description of major family names. As the reader, you may get worried about the complexity of the story. As you begin reading, you are presented with a world somewhere around the end of the Renaissance, and pre-Industrial Revolution by our history. There are ordinary descriptions of man and woman, villages, an aristocracy with castles and mansions, soldiers on foot and horseback, and grand sailing ships stocked with cannons.

But then the descriptions of the world, while still appearing natural and ordinary through the viewpoint of the character, begin to make less sense. There is now talk of people and elements aboard a ship. Ok, they are mages of sort. Controlling the wind for a sailing ship, brilliant. The other for the weight of the ship. Seems unnecessary unless you plan to overload the ship. Changing the weight to raise the ship? If a ship goes too far out of the water, it will tip. There is a strange lack of water being mentioned here. Wait, lets look at the front of the book again. Oh, now I get it.

Through first-person viewpoints of several characters, the story and world in "The Winds of Khalakovo" unfold. While the author expects you to hit the ground running in the understanding of the world he has created, it greatly adds to the immersion the reader receives. By seeing what the characters regard as commonplace or the mysterious, what is lowly and what is extraordinary, the reader gains an appreciation for the elements of the story and how it unfolds.

As for the story itself, you are given a healthy dose of adventure amongst a backdrop of politics and fantasy. Different character viewpoints show you not only the complete story, but the different opinions and aspects that different points of the world's society hold to be true and more important. Emotions are complex and well described, and a sense of urgency is well kept through most of the story, pulling the reader in.

The author has done a fantastic job of setting a very good story into a wonderfully crafted original world. The novel is a page turner that will leave you wanting to continue on through "The Lays of Anuskaya" after the last page is complete.

6 out of 7 people found this review helpful.

Thoroughly enjoyed it.

A good fantasy read with a great ending that makes me want to read the next one!

5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

Recommended for lovers of epic fantasy

If you like epic fantasy--think George R. R. Martin or Brandon Sanderson-- you'll love this. Imaginative world-building, great character angst, and a complex plot makes Winds a novel that you can lose yourself in. You won't realize you've stayed up past your bedtime until you look at the clock and see you need to be at work in four hours!

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Long and Tedious

Story concept was interesting, but too long, descriptions are repetetive - just didn't hold my interest for 492 pages.

3 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

Good book

I liked this book, it had a Myst feel to it, the characters were very interesting and I found myself concerned about what happened to them. I gave this book 5 stars because it held my attention throughout, the multiple plots were interesting and the journey through this story was a ride to a different world.Only a few things that I found frustrating were the difficulty of some of the names of the characters which I eventually nicknamed everyone so I could keep track, and i would have liked a lead in at the beginning of the book. Something describing the way of life in this world. I will buy another of his books!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Can't wait for the next one

Fantastic book, coulnd't stop reading. Loved the full tangle of emotions and actions of the characters as people truly act and react. Just wonderfull!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Mediocre

This is a fairly dense book. The plot is moderately complex with a fairly large cast of characters. The use of Russian as a basis for language and culture tends to add to the complexity. The story itself is not bad, it just never managed to rise above mediocre. My biggest complaints would be the poor explanation of the aether and the rather abrupt end. A lot happens at a very quick pace in the final fifty pages. The ending was unexpected and, frankly, left the story feeling unresolved.

I read this on a Nook, and the formatting was horrible. There were a range of problems: words running together, hyphens in the middle of words, line breaks splitting paragraphs. I also found the lack of breaks between scenes problematic - a paragraph in one time or location followed immediately with no break by a second paragraph in a completely different time or space. Oh, and the maps are virtually worthless on the Nook. The publisher would do well to consider enlarged multi-page maps for ebooks.

In the end, I always ask myself two questions when I complete a book: Would I read another book in this series? Would I read an unrelated book by this author? In this case, I probably would not read either.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Strong start, but ultimately frustrating read.

This was an extremely frustrating book for me. There is so much good here- the world, the political situation, the religious landscape, all of it is fascinating, and the story is, for the most part, quite good. But Mr. Beaulieu loses his way by the end, and to say the conclusion is unsatisfying is the worst sort of understatement.

The greatest problem, though, is that an otherwise fun read is consistently sabotaged by a combination of sloppy editing and awkward writing. Either this book had no editor, or it deserved a much better one than it had. There are continuity problems, (in one scene our hero dismounts from his horse- twice), grammatical errors, and in some cases incorrect words.

The e-edition is also not the greatest. Words often run together, or get broken up when they shouldn't be. It all adds up to a book that I really wanted to enjoy, but couldn't. By the last page, I was more angry than excited.

This could have, and should have, been done much better.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Now I see why it was free!!!!

Most books I have zipped right through, this book has been a difficult read, it will sit on a shelf.

1 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

The Winds is a thick book and a heavy read. Or, is that a heavy

The Winds is a thick book and a heavy read. Or, is that a heavy book and a thick read? Either way, it’s physically big and mentally engaging. We’re not in Middle Earth any more. No, we’re in Anuskaya. Gone are the English-based names of people, places and things. Here the populace meet at the palotza and are protected by the strelitz. Here the duchies of Khalakovo and Vostroma are to be bound in a wedding and the bride docks her four-masted wind ship at an eyrie.

At that point I thought it was a great book and a good read.

Then he introduces the Aramahn with their controlling powers over the spirits of nature and I’m hooked. What I liked the most about the book was that these weren’t air spirits or fire spirits these were hezhan. The havahezhan were spirits of the air and the most commonly referenced in the book. These are summoned and used by the Aramahn to pilot the great windships. Beaulieu uses this wealth of language in The Winds very well. It is refreshing to have a Russian/Cyrillic language base in a fantasy book. One that also doesn’t lean on tired stereotypes.

If you want to embark on a long, rich, exotic journey stop reading this and go pick up The Winds of Khalakovo by Brad Beaulieu. You can thank me later!

Great!

Highly recommended. Can't wait for the next book in the series.

As you can figure out from the blurb, there's a definitive influ

As you can figure out from the blurb, there's a definitive influence from Russian names and lore in Winds of Khalakovo, the latter making the book quite distinctive. That presence is not simply felt in the names of the inhabitants of Anuskaya or the locations but also in the definition of clothing or choice of beverage (vodka) and in denominating some concepts, like the kind of 'elementals' from a parallel world, which I'll get to later. Russian names are not part of the easiest anthroponomy to follow. Even more when they are applied to various specimens of hezhans (hava, dhosha, suura, etc...). On the other hand, the names of the characters become familiar easily enough since there's a nice diversity in them.

The only aspect of this choice of "language" that I didn't like is the use of "Da" and "Nyet" in place of yes and no. That's the only element of the Russian language that is actually applied and it feels weird (more so in italic) or out of place.

I could speak further of the names but what is capital is the protagonists to which they are applied. We mostly follow Nikandr, the young Prince of the archipelago of Khalakovo, his lover, Rehada, who is an Aramahn part of a terrorist group and Atiana, the daughter of the duke of Vostroma, his betrothed. Nikandr is a dedicated man, conscientious and adventurous with a strange illness in link with the state of the world trying desperately to find a cure and in love with flying on his airship. His role takes more importance as the story slowly unfolds and aside from a couple of dubious moments when his actions are driven by god knows what, he usually stay true to himself. But then, I think I would have liked him better if he eventually had blown a fuse or two.

Concerning the two other PoV, the feminine ones, I was fascinated by their decisions and path of action in the face of what they have to live through. Nikandr is straightforward, an exemplary heroic human being, while some of his male counterparts from other duchies are dumb, spoiled and mischievous. The women in Winds of Khalakovo are more subtle. Rehada is haunted by her past, in search of retribution she thinks will permit her to feel better but not at any cost. When you're part of a group of hidden extremists, you have to manage truth is many cunning ways. Her part is what makes the story more profound. The conflict between the whole duchies and the Landed (the 'free people') is one of the main theme and she make's it more captivating.

As for Atiana, she feels both fragile, frustrating and tenacious. She's the character through which we can glimpse the experience of touching the aether, another concept at the heart of one of the book threads, 'world-endingly so'. However, as for Nikandr, the author sometime chose to make her perform some extraordinary tasks without the knowledge of them, it felt fortuitous or astounding depending on which occasion. By the way, the three of them have special talents inherent to the magical or fantastical elements of Beaulieu's book.

Other elements in the book catch the eye rapidly, right off when you look at the cover. The windships are a great idea, formed from windwood, piloted by Aramahns connected to wind spirits and driven in aether 'currents'. Their complexity was probably not easy to put to words and above all, they create mythic battle scenes, which were somewhat hard to imagine. Recreating fighting in the air with ships was risky, potentially entertaining but mostly confounding.

The battles involving the 'elementals' (hezhan), are less evasive. Although the hezhan have difficult names to follow and are based on the usual elements (air, fire, water, earth, spirit), they bring more dimension to the tale. Along with a couple of more magical concepts like the kind of soul-stones, it all makes up for many fantastical features. The world feels richer for it but the story is also encumbered. This approach makes me think of Brandon Sanderson or Brent Weeks. Some portions of the book are defined by this instead of being enriched by it.

The author's writing is smooth, slightly polished with a slow cadence. Usually, the chapters are short, creating a great rhythm. Sadly, there's a weird presence of PoV switches in the middle of the action that make the prose more complicated for nothing. To his credit, I think he wrote an intricate story with several storylines that may not always fit perfectly well together but that are essentially compelling. Dukes are fighting for power, the world in on the verge of complete destruction, love is blossoming and everyone wants to play his part in it. I'll definitely read the follow-up, The Straits of Galahesh.

Tough Read

You'd think that a book about Russian royalty with a splash of fantasy and tons of violence would be up my alley. It is. But this was so boring! I STRUGGLED to finish the last 140 pages - mainly because I received anticipated books for Christmas. But I finished it! The last 30 pages were the best. I gave it two stars because of the last 30 pages. I won't be reading anything else by this author.

A compelling fantasy

Although challenging to get started with all of the different characters and created world, something kept me reading and wanting more. I think it could be made into a great movie with today's filmmaking technology. LadyB

worth reading

The beginning was a little hard to follow, but then developed into an interesting read.

Loved it!!

A fantastic book - a lovely engrossing fantasy novel! Such descriptive writing was used, that the world & the characters unfolded before my eyes as I read further & further in. The ending was both a satisfying conclusion to the novel and open-ended enough for a sequel to be written (which I desperately hope happens).

A Good Read

Slow beginning and some of the Russian terms made it difficult for me to get into, but I was glad I stuck with it. The characters are interesting and well fleshed out. Good story line that is a good start for a series.

convoluted but compelling

While there was a lot happening in these pages, I was intrigued enough to keep on chugging. Characters weren't exactly likeable (save for Ashan), and the pace can change quite abruptly. But I have to admit it was a different but splendid fantasy.