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| Book Cover via Amazon.com |
Opinion
With all my delight and joy, Drew Melbourne contacted me to read his book and sent me a copy. The physical copy of this book is beautiful, and it’s got easy to turn pages, and it has easy to read the text. So right off the bat, I was impressed by the presentation of the book. And as I try to do for any book I review, I also picked it up on Kindle Unlimited because I also wanted to read it and tell you what I thought of the e-copy.
For my first impressions, I couldn’t stop laughing at how funny and how clever the humor is in the book. From the opening pages onward, this book took me on an adventure that reminded me of my high school days of watching “Cowboy BeBop” in the early morning while I got ready for school. It’s full of charm, danger, irony, jokes, and thrill. There wasn’t a pause for bordeom anywhere in the beginning so it had me at the jump and I loved it.
Now for some critiques, and my first one has to do with the “Story Structure, Foundation and Presentation” Portion of my scoring. There are no spaces at all between the paragraphs on the e-copy or the physical book. However, this is going to only be a partial scoring issue because on the physical book due to the size and width of pages and margins, the lack of spacing is okay. However on a kindle, not so much, walls upon walls of text are painful for the eyes and cause strain.
Let’s go into what I loved about the story. I was a huge fan of the lightness of humor mixed with the darkness of tone and circumstances. There are some incredibly deep and malevolent issues going on in the world building and systems that were set up for the story, and yet, at no time was I feeling depressed about it or overly sickened. “Percival Gynt” reads kind of like a well done Marvel movie from the MCU. If this were a Marvel movie, it’d be like a fun mix of Doctor Strange meets Guardians of the Galaxy meets Thor. It’s so perfect the way it fits together, and I loved the chemistry of how the lightness mixes with the dark themes.
Grammar, spelling, margins and spot checks on this story are done well. I love how clean it was and easy to read when it came to those things. Again my only issue with the actual appearance of lines on the page has to do with the lack of spaces between paragraphs.
Next, I adore the character buildups and arches. Every character is unique, and all have individual uniqueness to them. Even secondary or background side note characters have a purpose and a life in this world. There is one character who my heart broke for, but I had to laugh, he had a chili pepper allergy (no spoilers) but how he ended up finding out and the circumstances on what happened with it, was pure comic genius. This book challenges conventions of leadership roles, religion, politics and policies as well: it’s overall a fantastic story, and it’s so much fun.
Lastly and my most amazing of compliments, this has a complete story that could give Tolkien a run for his money. Not only is “Percival Gynt” an entertaining story that has fun characters, but the world building is Tolkien level with the details, there are other languages and religions, different cultures, believes and yet, I never was bored. This is so modern and fresh for an epic fantasy that it deserves high praise. I think this would be a fantastic movie or TV Series and I hope someone is paying attention to it because I’d love to binge watch these characters on Netflix. It's WONDERFUL and fun.
Score
With all of the math in mind and all of my delight, “Percival Gynt and the Conspiracy of Days” earns a 96/100 and this gem is going into the “Mrs. Y Recomends” pile because I do. I love this story. I want you all to read it so if you are looking for a space fantasy with a lot of fun, magic, and heart, pick this up. It’s a nonstop action adventure that should send you spinning.
Until tomorrow my friends!
