Traitor's Prize

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Title: Traitor’s Prize
Author:  Thaddeus White
Publisher and Copyright:  ©2017 Thaddeus White
Price:  $2.99 (Kindle)
Cathbad’s Rating: 8.0 of 10

A Review by, Cathbad

  

Traitor’s Prize

 

Another great cover starts things off!  Once again, Mr. White has the perfect cover art (© 2017  Choong Jun Hao and Teng Teng Teoh) for his novel!

This story begins on the high seas, a fortune-seeking man (Fritigern), his snow hound, the woman Anja, the crew of the Falke and those of scores more ships, heading south “seeking the plunder of a war-torn kingdom.”

This is a well-written book.  It is a tale of war, of family, intrigue and deceit.  There are equal parts honor and betrayal in abundance.  Love for loves’ sake and for pleasure’s.

Thaddeus’ world is complex and well defined.  The characters are so defined and written so well, you really don’t need to be told who is speaking.

My problems with this book are mostly personal taste, and no actual reflection on the writing.

First, I feel it is too busy.  There is so much going on, it is hard to keep things straight in my head.  Now, this is totally understandable.  The Kingdom, after all, is at war!   Still, I often felt like I needed diagrams to keep things straight.

Second, is the pace.  Yes, it is war in a medieval setting.  Travel is slow, and days, weeks, or even months can easily go by before the next military action.  But there is a dichotomy here that, for me, was hard to understand.  Everyone was receiving timely communiqués of the goings on in this war-torn nation, as though the couriers moved extremely fast among the Principals.  But if this is so, why did troop movement move so slowly?  Yes, the movement of large numbers of soldiers is indeed slower, but if the roads are clear for the couriers, why not for the troops? 

Perhaps I’m nit-picking here, but the pace just seemed out of sync.

There were several things I also enjoyed.

For one, I appreciate that magic is a rare thing, and is not being used to decide the outcome of the war – a nasty plot trick that would be!

The twists and unexpected turns provided entertaining reading, and those at the end of the tale whet the appetite for the third and final epic in The Crown of Blood trilogy.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Characterizations in this novel are absolutely superb!  And that, in my opinion, makes this novel great.  There are characters you love, some you hate, and others you want to hear about, just because they’re interesting!

But the characters also encompass the third thing I disliked:  There are simply too many of them!  I had a hard enough time keeping up with the situations, but all the names I also had to recall!  Hey, I’m an old man!

I suppose if one scanned through this review quickly, they might think I didn’t like the book:  But the truth is, I did like it – a lot!  Of course I would have done things differently!  I’m a different author!  But the tale told here is told well.  The descriptives bring alive an intriguing, genuinely unique world that I’ll be back to check in on again – in the next novel!

 

I rate this novel 8.0 out of 10.

P.S.  There’s a really cool monster about two-thirds the way through the novel.  You just can’t miss it!!