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A faded compass looks out from a background of swirling ink and parchment. A tiki style mask stares outward with silvery eyes. A musket and a katana are crossed in front of the mask baring it from coming towards the reader.
Matilda Lanai is chosen for a special task by the head of her guild house, an ancient dwarf named Captain Block. Together the two will travel across oceans and seas, cities, kingdoms, and whole continents to save the House of Deskata. Their journey will take her to the fabled city of Vod'Adia, also known as the Sable City, and into a tangle of death and intrigue.
What I liked:
- The characters were intriguing if not completely fleshed out. The most unique of which was Neshatari.
- The banter towards the end of the book between the characters is occasionally giggle worthy.
What I disliked:
- Holy run on sentence, Batman! I'm not usually a stickler for punctuation but that changes once it becomes difficult to read. And The Sable City was definitely difficult to read. I saw dozens of sentences which lasted no less than 4 or 5 lines of type. Sometimes one sentence took an entire paragraph. Come on, man, take a breath!
- Next, I'm all for world building but there's only so much of it one can take. The author described every scene, every country, every piece of useless history ad nausem. Pages upon pages were dedicated to describing each place our characters visit without actually moving the plot along one whit or making us any more invested in our heroes.
- As stated earlier none of the characters are completely fleshed out. Maybe if the author had spent a little less time building his world he would have noticed that his characters were a little one-dimensional. What's the use of an epic sprawling landscape with paper cut outs for people? A death that should of felt like a cannon ball to the chest was more like a whisper of wind. Why? Because the author didn't make us invested in the character.
- The Sable City is long. That is not in and of itself a bad thing, but its also incredibly slow. The journey drags its feet every step of the way, introducing more and more characters and pushing the reader further and further away. Every single time barring the last time that I picked up the book it was a struggle to not put it back down again within minutes. That didn't change til about 75% of the way through. Then it picked up and became a serviceable story.
- Our breath taking mind boggling surprise in Camptown is not a surprise at all. Nope. I felt like I was just treading water til it could be revealed. My arms got tired.
"The Sable City" was this close *imagine my thumb and pointer finger almost touching* to being a two smiley book. I mean it. This close. At about the 3/4 mark it began to redeem itself. But quite frankly the book up and until that point was useless, flat, and unentertaining. The only reason I soldiered on to get to that point was because I intended to review it and it doesn't seem fair to review a book that I haven't completely read. So if you don't mind a long bland beginning then this book is for you, otherwise pass it up. There are other much better free novels out there. "The Sable City" is available for free at the time of this review. The following books in the series, of which there are currently 4 more, are all priced at $4.99 You can find out more about the series and the author at www.sablecity.wordpress.com
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3 out of 4 smileys
Recommended for those that have alot of time to spare and enjoy world driven versus plot/character driven stories.
Synopsis"For the first time in a hundred years, Vod'Adia - the fabled Sable City - is Opening. All across the known world, adventurers hungry for gold and relics from the Witch King's era are making their way to the legendary ruins. For many of them, the Sable City will claim their lives and perhaps even their very souls. But for one heroic fellowship bent only on rescue, entering this deadly place may do worse than destroy them. It may destroy the entire world.
The journey begins in the Miilark Islands, where a most unusual dwarf makes a most unusual choice. Captain Block, charged with finding the exiled heir of House Deskata, picks Tilda Lanai to accompany him - a young woman newly trained in the arts of the Guild, but completely untested. With the help of a rag-tag company that includes a ronin samurai, a semi-competent wizard, a noblewoman in disguise, a healer, a warrior-priest and two ex-soldiers (one in danger of being hanged for desertion), Tilda's quest leads her into the very heart of the Sable City--where devils and demons roam freely, and very little is what it seems. "
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