Refuge Ending by Gene Herington Series: Tale of a Silver Lion #1
on January 29th 2015
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 47
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Pencheval had traveled to the Emerald Refuge to get away from the life of a Silver Lion Adept. Being part of a guild of mercenaries and bounty hunters was wearing hard upon him. But he quickly found the slower pace of contemplation in the quiet valley dull, and accepted the contract he should not have taken.
It seemed easy enough work for one skilled in sword and magic. All he had to do was accompany a patrol and assess a threat. Instead, he found a scourge strong enough to lay waste to the Emerald Refuge, and it will take everything he has to even survive the night.
This was an extremely short book at only about fifty pages, so this review will be short as well. I always find stories like this hard to review. So much needs to happen in such a short time that I generally feel a bit cheated on shorter reads. I think this is a personal thing, not a knock on the author at all. I’m a finicky reader and a lot needs to happen to snag my attention.
This was an interesting story with some fun fights and great ideas. We follow Pencheval as he leaves retirement to take on a job to find out what happened to a patrol. The book sticks to two PoV’s, Pencheval and the antagonist. I must say, I usually don’t like spending too much time with the antagonist in stories, but this was done very well. We got an inside peek at what made the antagonist tick and it actually made sense. It explored a variety of goblins and their viewpoint on the world around them. Very nicely done.
I can’t say the characters were well developed. It’s such a short book that I don’t think there was much room for it. We’ve got a nice picture of them and learned a bit of backstory. Still, it wasn’t enough for me, but keep in mind I’m a character driven reader. What I do wish was that some of the internal processing by Pencheval was cut in half and perhaps more of his personality and that of his companions were explored. Since it is short, his musing became redundant very early on.
The world isn’t explored in detail. There’s some mention of fun stuff that I’m sure will be fleshed out in future books—at least, it seems like that’s where the story will go.
Some parts felt a bit rushed, but there was a fight scene toward the end that I absolutely loved. It was done well and had some tense moments.
Overall, it wasn’t a bad introduction, but it didn’t grab me. If you’re looking for something super short and entertaining, give it a whirl. If the second installment in this series is short, I might invest a bit of time into it.
About Gene Herington
Gene Herington was born in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia in 1971. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering and is currently working in software development. He enjoys fantasy and began writing it again when a new fiction idea refused to be suppressed by day to day life.
