First of all, I am very grateful to be one of the lucky ones to win a copy of this book in the giveaways. It felt like Christmas when I got my copy in the mail. The best part about it is how very good this book is. It's a wonderful, layered saga with different narratives weaved together in a way that makes it difficult to put down. Maxwell Alexander Drake has created a richly complex and dramatic world filled with unforgettable characters. I highly recommend it and can't wait for the next in the series to come out.

Um...where to start? I guess I should start by mentioning the disclaimer that I received with this book. I received a free copy of the book, for which I am of course grateful, and it so happens that this book copy I got was part of the 'rush job' of a first printing. The book won an award or something, and so the author had to rush to get it published for some reason. The result (which the author admits) is a copy of the book riddled with mistakes - typos, wrong names used, etc. I can definitely vouch for this, as I struggled through almost every page of this book. I was constantly rolling my eyes and muttering angrily at the abominable form. I will actually have some good things to say, but then I'll get into more detail about the bad stuff, complete with examples.

As a writer myself I really am loathe to write negative reviews of other people's work, but sometimes there isn't much else to be done! With this book, the first in the Genesis of Oblivion Saga, I actually found the story itself to be quite interesting, particularly towards the end when the story finally started to pick up a bit. At first as I was reading, it really seemed to drag and nothing of any interest seemed to be happening. There were actually things that happened that I'm pretty sure didn't need to happen, i.e. there was no point to them (i.e. that soldier guy dying out in the fields near Arderi's home before he had left with Rillion's troupe. I was also pretty bored by Alant Cor's lead-up to arriving at the Elmorian nation, to be quite honest I can't even remember what the place was called, even though I just finished this book 5 minutes ago. Anyway...other than the boring parts, the story wasn't too bad, even if it had elements of fantasy cliché and may well be seen as a bit of a rip off of other fantasy series (mostly the world building is the cliché part, not the actual storyline...though I haven't read all the fantasy ever written, so can't say that for sure). For my part, the Shapers and their "Essence" reminded me of the Wheel of Time's Aes Sedai and their One Power. The people from Silaway (I think) spoke very similarly to the WoT world's Illianers, with the "It do no be safe around here" type speech. But as said above, all in all the story itself wasn't god-awful.

I read another review of this story that mentioned the difficulty in actually giving a crap about any of the characters. I felt that way too for the most part, even if there were odd moments when I actually hoped the characters in question wouldn't die. For the most part some of the moments when things could have got really emotional & bonded the reader with the characters were brushed over. A lot of stuff was brushed over, like with Klain's reunion with his sword by the kid Charver - Klain scoops Charver up in a warm hug to thank him for the sword back, and then a second later they're leaving. There's nothing about Charver's response to the hug or anything like that.

But now we get into the really negative part. I have a few e.g.s of moments that made me not only disappointed but irate! The author used the word 'shutter' instead of 'shudder', on several occasions. I even think he might've written "shutter to think" on one occasion. Instead of the word 'disdain', he used 'distain'. There was complete inconsistency with use of apostrophes, and as a grammar Nazi this really got on my nerves a lot. In general, there was a lot of poor sentence structure with sentences like, "Running to catch up, the moon was full in the sky". Okay, I made that one up, but there were instances of precisely this kind of sentence structure. I can find some if you really want me to, but I didn't start taking notes till later in the book. There were occasions of really awkward simile use, but for the most part the other stuff was more of a problem. There were also moments when past and present tense were mixed a little, even with just one wrong word chosen.

As for the characters...?

I wrote a note at one point that said: "Alant is a moron. Also...Alant's bangs?!?!?!" I wasn't aware that people in fantasy novels could have bangs (ya know, a fringe with your hairdo, for those who aren't American). This kind of thing I just found really jarring.

That is my rant over and done, and I WILL mention again that this was a rushed publication so the author really didn't have time to fix all the stuff that needed to be fixed. But I should have known from his warning that his book wasn't worth reading, at least in this format. Despite how angry this reading made me, I kind of do want to read on to see what happens in future books. I know, I'm insane, right?