miguel-se7

DUTIES AND PURPOSE ARE THE VEIL THEY USE TO BLIND YOU TO REALITY.

The following is a Spoiler free review of The Fires of War: The Tyranny of the Archangels. If I ever get around to making a spoiler version of the review I will update with a link here.

The Fires of War: The Tyranny of the Archangels is the debut novel by Steve Sands (@vengefulseven). I wasn't sure what to expect when I first started reading the novel, seeing it described as a Heaven vs Hell story, I feared it would rapidly become a story filled with the same old tropes that are all too common to the Fantasy setting. I can say I was pleasantly surprised.

Steve Sands introduces some interesting concepts into his fantasy world, a mix between ancient myths and different religions, from the way religions develop into our world to how Heaven really works. During the journey, the protagonists stumble into interesting revelations that I felt they could have been explored more deeply, while these revelations do end up affecting the plot and shaping up the characters, they presented the opportunity to delve into interesting philosophical questions that remained unexplored.

As for the plot, it moves along at a nice pace, providing the necessary explanations behind most of the events, and aside from a few instances where things happen a certain way or at a certain time just because the plot needs them to, it blends together as a logical chain of events while setting the stage for a follow-up novel.

The writing is pretty simple and easy to follow along, It has some funny/witty lines every now and then, and it shows us that there are good and bad characters in both sides of the struggle, each with his own unique strengths and weaknesses. That being said I did find some issues with the writing. Most characters that we are presented with do not have a distinctive enough description, sure, some are tall or yellow, but for the most part we are left with little indication as to how we should picture these characters. Aside from that, the novel needs some polishing as you run into typos and other minor errors that subtract from the enjoyment of the story, although I'm told that at least the ones I ran into have been fixed so far.

Overall the novel is a fun, fast-paced read with some interesting concepts that could have been a lot better if it had been further polished.

You can get a copy of the novel here.

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