I love brevity. I also love fantasy. Historically, these things don’t play well together. Fat, doorstopper-sized tomes are the norm in fantasy, and while I love big epics, it’s nice to read shorter pieces, too.
A Reaper of Stone by Mark Gelineau and Joe King is a fantastic (free!) fantasy tale that packs an amazing story into a short novella. Within the space of a hundred-ish pages, the authors build an amazing world, create interesting characters, and craft an engaging plot. Even despite my love of big fat fantasy books, it’s refreshing to read something short and sweet. This novella essentially condenses the best aspects of epic fantasy into a pint-sized package.
The story’s setup is relatively fresh. The main character, Elinor, is commissioned by the King to tear down a castle belonging to another royal family who died. Along with her good friend, a royal engineer, they loathe to perform their mission because of the castle’s beauty, but are both committed to serving their King.
But when they reach their castle, they uncover a conspiracy: the royal family’s death was no accident, but part of a rival’s scheme …
Despite the story’s swiftness, there’s two or three quality twists that kept me eager to see where it would go. While there were several action scenes that felt unclear, choreography-wise, and while there’s an aspect of deus-ex-machina to the ending (the main character is rescued from a position where you’d expect certain death), the story has quite a strong plot.
I particularly enjoyed how finishing the book created a strong catharsis. This was unexpected considering the story took about an hour and half to read. Repetition helped with this: the story ends by copying a line from the prologue.
Character wise, the protagonist and her engineer offsider were reasonably well-developed, but I would’ve enjoyed more complexity from the antagonists. They felt a little too one-dimensionally evil for my liking. Exposing the reader to their motivations would’ve built more sympathy and created a more nuanced story.
In terms of setting, this story had a surprisingly large amount of well-executed elements, given its shortness. My favourite were the Rendworms: gigantic, carnivorous monsters that burst from the ground and consume any who dare step foot into their territory. While they were similar to Dune’s sandworms, they had enough wonderfully visceral, horrific descriptions to delight me. Likewise, they didn’t exist just for shock value. A prologue involving them at the start came back with a great pay-off later in the book.
Overall, A Reaper of Stone is a fantastic story for anyone looking for a short, fast-paced, unique fantasy read. Highly recommended. Best of all, you can get it for free on Amazon.
My rating:
Characters: 3/5
Plot: 4/5
Setting: 4/5
Overall: 4/5
***
If you enjoy dark fantasy novellas like A Reaper of Stone, you’ll love my upcoming fantasy novella, Into the Ashwoods. It’s a suspenseful tale about a crew of misfit criminals who venture into a desolate forest to find a powerful magical artifact: but they’re not the only ones who want it.
Into the Ashwoods is a dark fantasy novella, perfect for fans of Brandon Sanderson’s inventive worldbuilding and Joe Abercrombie’s gritty tone.
Join my FREE Reader Club by using the form below and I’ll let you know when it’s released! Plus, when you sign up I’ll send you 5 free sci-fi and fantasy short stories.
