Today it's also an absolute pleasure to take part in the BlogTour The Heron Kings by Eric Lewis.
By day Eric Lewis is a PhD research chemist weathering the latest rounds of mergers and layoffs and still trying to remember how to be a person again long after surviving grad school. In addition to subjecting his writing to one rejection after another, he can be found gathering to himself as many different sharp and pointies as possible and searching for the perfect hiking trail, archery range of single malt Scotch. Don’task where, because he’s never lived anywhere for longer than five years.
His short fiction has been published in Nature, Electric Spec, Allegory, Bards and Sages Quarterly, the anthologies Into Darkness Peering, Best Indie Speculative Fiction Vol.1 and Crash Code, as well as other venues detailed at ericlewis.ink. The Heron Kings is his first novel.
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About the book
After a warlord slaughters her patients, Sister Alessia quits the cloister and strikes out on her own to heal the victims of a brutal dynastic conflict. Her roaming forest camp unwittingly becomes the center of a vengeful peasant insurgency, raiding the forces of both sides to survive. Alessia struggles to temper their fury as well as tend wounds, consenting to ever greater violence to keep her new charges safe. When they uncover proof of a foreign conspiracy prolonging the bloodshed, Alessia risks the very lives she’s saved to expose the truth and bring the war to an end.
Alessia is no longer able to stand aside and watch the innocent be slaughtered, and the less than innocent of course. As a physic she must save lives, regardless of their affiliations. Not everyone agrees with her, which is why she decides to try and help to the tide of the war.
Ulnoth is scarred and a victim of the war-ton land he resides in. He wants revenge and blood. There is no space for forgiveness in his torn and bleeding heart. Together the two become a force to be reckoned with along with a merry bunch of renegades who fight with them.
It's a conflict driven fantasy, a compelling read.
Lewis gives us plenty of rage and violence. Battles and slaying galore. Instead of having the band of warriors lean towards one side of the conflict, the Heron Kings take their own path. It's very much one determined by personal pain, grief and a fierce will to see change. To set people free from this tedious and needless slaughter and constant battle for power.
Lewis gives us two damaged main characters who are forged together by the common denominator of anger. Loss and rage pave the way for both Alessia and Ulnoth. I would have like to have seen a little more fleshing out of the secondary characters, especially because in a fantasy world built on war the probability of death is pretty high. More depth for the merry band of followers.
Aside from that Lewis pens a riveting driven read, which often shows glimpses of light in the extreme quagmire of darkness.
Buy The Heron Kings at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Flame Tree Press: April 2020. Buy at Amazon com.
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