Badass Author and admin, M.P. Ness shares his thoughts on "Epic: Legacy" by Badass Author, Justin Osborne.
"It's a very straight forward story of a young stranger in a strange land.
Our protagonist is a teenager, a musician, a good guy who will stand up for the less fortunate. He is the kid in school who was kind of a Badass; a loner in ways, by choice, but capable of having lots of friends if he cared enough to choose to collect them. But, he is realistically flawed in that and other ways.
In fact, a Badass in our world, Deacon is so flawed that when he falls through a fairy mound into another world, he isn't much of a Badass anymore. He must adjust to and overcome many new challenges and troubles as a smaller, less capable outsider.
One of the many things I found great about this story was something you don't see a lot of in epic fantasy -and especially not expected in a book entitled "Epic"- is Justin's ability to keep the story small. Many times, epics simply grow and grow in scale as the tale moves along. But in Epic: Legacy, he manages to keep the events less monstrous in themselves, and focuses on the characters in their smaller challenges and lives in a larger scenario involving the total sundering of an entire world.
Overall, I feel like the author's strength is in his vividly painted characters.
But I must say this also includes his antagonists/villains.
I especially liked his ultimate villain's unique concept. Read it, and you'll understand just what I'm talking about (I won't spoil the ingenuity Justin Osborne has come up with in his baddy, Uru, as I came to call him).
Now, the one major con.
The book is like many indies, and could use a thorough editor, and that would make it a five star work, really.
But, if you're the type who can read through spelling typos, word misuse, and grammar errors, and just focus on the tale and enjoy it in your mind's eye for what it is, then you'll enjoy the ride!
It was a fun swift read, and I look forward to my read of the sequel and forthcoming third book in the series, where I imagine it will grow to focus on the aforementioned Epic events that were set up but also evaded in this first book.
One thing I must remark, part of the reason it moved so softly was a penchant of the Author's, which I think he should avoid and overcome; the use of often times extremely short chapters, created out of brief little scenes which would be better off as simply scene breaks instead.
However, he might also be on to something in these short scenes, because it flows like film does, filling us in on little details and important little moments. In doing so, each has a savvy title, and he could develop a little niche for himself by maintaining short scenes as breaks but WITH their titles still intact...rather than as individual titled chapters -as I haven't seen that before. Titled scene breaks? might be worth giving a shot.
Overall, despite the form and function problems I mentioned, I still give it a four out of five stars, because the characters were colorful and believable, and the story, while focusing small to contradict the title, was a sound foundation to the forthcoming books."
**** out of *****
4/5!
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