Turning off the games consoles and television and
stepping out of their spheres of all-time-consuming hold this week, I have
returned to reading. I was faced with Gravity’s Rainbow - all 780 pages of it.
As I’ll likely not finish it before Christmas I settled on reading Summer Storm
instead - which is a little bit shorter at 23,000.
The novella is a freebie introduction to The Wrath
of the Northmen series by Elizabeth Baxter. I would suggest picking up your
copy if you are interested in reading the full fantasy series as Summer Storm
appears to set a lot of things up for the main series.
Summer Storm itself tells the short story of Falen,
an adolescent princess who is torn between her duty to her kingdom and her own
desire to join an engineering academy. A jaunt out into the woods to check on
her weather measuring equipment sees Falen caught in a storm. On the way back
she glimpses an unconscious man in the river and rescues him.
Nashir, the man she rescues, makes a full recovery
and offers to help Falen with her experiments. However, over time, his presence
in the royal palace of Variss takes on a much darker agenda.
As a first outing into Elizabeth Baxter’s fantasy
world, I felt the story lacked substance in how well it described the
surroundings. I did not feel like I was actually there or got any great
impression of it.
That said, the characters were interesting -
especially Falen - and the narrative flowed well, if a little slowly at points.
It’s not a bad intro to the series and something fantasy fans should enjoy.
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