Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940149591718 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nine Muse Press |
| Publication date: | 02/27/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | NOOK Book |
| Sales rank: | 947,483 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Orison
5 out of 5
based on
0 ratings.
8 reviews.
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This review was originally published by Kurt's Frontier under Invincible Love of Reading.
Synopsis:
Story is a thief who lives in the city of Calushain. She and her brothers are servants of a crime lord boss, and Story is skimming money from her thefts to escape the city and her servitude. When her brother betrays her to their boss, she finds herself living on borrowed time. In her effort to repay her debt, she steals a magic object that can tip the balance of power on her world. The Orison that is filled with the power of the dragons, powerful beings that sow chaos with their meddling. With a disgraced Imperial Sorcerer and a foreign warrior helping her, she holds the power to reshape or destroy the world. What could possibly go wrong?
Review:
Daniel Swenson has put out an epic fantasy. Story is instantly likable as a sharp, sensible, somewhat reckless burglar. She has a brother she loves but doesn’t trust. She has a wizard friend who drinks and gambles his money away. Daniel Swenson guides the reader through political intrigues, betrayals, and the machinations of the dragons who hold ultimate power on this world. Like many others, I am eagerly awaiting the sequel.
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Reviewed by Eduardo Aduna for Readers' Favorite
Daniel Swensen's Orison is a wonderful read that had me enthralled from start to finish. Mankind has become mere pawns to the will of dragons. Wrynn, a fallen sorcerer, has had encounters with these powerful beings in the past and now lives a life of squalor and stupor just to escape. His only friend, the thief Story, has problems of her own when her plans to escape a life of criminality suffer a more-than-slight hitch. These two, together with the exiled Rul Halak, prince Dunnac, and Story's older brother Crux are drawn into a web of manipulation and deceit woven by the powerful Penumbra. They can choose to be pawns of the gods, or they could strike out on their own and carve their own path.
This is one of the few fantasy novels I have encountered that can be described as concise. Much like Glen Cook's The Black Company, there is nary a wasted word. Just to be clear, this is a good thing. Each chapter stands on its own merit and flows with the next seamlessly. The characters are defined not by wordy extrapolations, but by their actions, setting a fast pace for the entire novel. I love how Daniel Swensen plays with the novel's scope. The events in the novel are contained within a single city, but he never lets the reader forget that these situations have significant ramifications for the fate of the world. Subtlety and action can be a strange mix, but Daniel Swensen makes it work flawlessly. Orison is a good first novel by a very talented writer. He has crafted solid characters that are capable of carrying an entire series. I for one would eagerly await the next adventure of Story, Wrynn and Dunnac.
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Orison is a lean, mean, story with lots to love. I tore through this book in two days because it's a tale that propels you forward along with its protagonists. I look forward to reading more from Mr. Swensen, as I think we haven't heard the final tale told in this universe. He's having too much fun playing in this sandbox to give it up that easy. And I'm having too much fun reading.
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The writing was beautiful. The grammar was solid; the sentence structure was solid; the story flowed and the pacing was spot on. Character depth was present and the story had just enough background and setting description to move things along without being "too much information." The final scene was amazing and pulled the story in tight.
The story itself was intoxicating. I had a hard time putting this book down. Even when I knew certain events were inevitable, I wouldn't know how the characters would get from point A to point B. I loved watching the characters motivation shift as the story progressed. I loved the unique take on dragons and their part in the bigger scheme/story arc. But mostly I loved the main character Story. She was awesome in an understated way and the other characters moved around her without truly noticing her until the very end. It was all excellent story telling.
Mr. Swensen pulled me into his world and held me tight - a tourist on holiday watching the pieces lock into place and the story unfold almost as if I were standing on the streets of Calushain itself.
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With Daniel Swensen’s Orison, I was hooked the moment I read the first sentence. Swensen immediately dragged me into the world of Calushain and the lives of its denizens in a way that brought the city to life, from a den of thieves to the high halls of Calushain’s queen. While reading, I really felt that this place existed that I went on, well after finishing the book, thinking about the world Swensen created within Orison. The sheer quality of the writing, storytelling, and world-building completely blew me away. As a writer myself, this is the level of storytelling I aspire to.
As for the characters, we see the story unfold through several different characters, all of whom come alive within the book’s pages, but none so much as Story and Wrynn. I love thieves, and I love magic, and while I enjoyed reading about Ashen One-Howl (and loved the descriptions of magic involved with his side of the story), Wrynn was probably my favorite character. I have a fondness for wizards, and with a wizard whose powers have been throttled by unknown reasons, I couldn’t help but fall in love with Wrynn. Story is likeable in that young, dream-driven girl kind of way, but it of course gets her in quick trouble. In the novel, all the characters are pulled along by greater schemes, manipulated into difficult situations by the wills of the dragons, a complex plot that is difficult to understand until the very end. The magic is so well entwined in the world and the religion so realized that both directly affect every character involved, and each character has to figure out how to survive in the wake of all that power.
Orison is an engaging read. I could hardly put it down until I finished (if I had a choice, I never would have put it down). I would recommend this book to any reader of fantasy. The rich world and characters will delight and surprise you. With a promise of more to come, I look forward to discovering more about Calushain and the characters within.
[Disclaimer: I received an ARC from the author]
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