Kalath is a sorcerer among a barbarian tribe, minding his own barbarian business, when his wife gets kidnapped.
Vowing to rescue his wife from the clutches of an evil sorcerer king and exact his vengeance, Kalath journeys to strange new lands, encountering killer robots that run on magic, a husband-and-wife team of mercenaries, an arena where warriors and wizards fight to the death, and other strange and haunting people and places.
Singer’s TO KILL A KING packs plenty of cool ideas into its short length, as illustrated above. The aforementioned mercenaries, referred to as Blue Berry and Blue River, are interesting characters, whose love for one another stands out almost as much as their prowess in combat. The two dueling wizards utilizing armies of magically animated automatons is an indelibly cool image.
The book’s descriptions are short and to the point, plenty of characterization packed in: “The two warriors looked truly ferocious, like the berserkers you get among my people, and the sorcerer was a crazed old man, dressed in tatters and mumbling and drooling.”
The short length does detract, however: the story seems fairly rushed along, rarely ever taking time to bask in the scenery, as it were. The reader sees very little indication of who Kalath and his beloved Nysandre are to one another before the latter is kidnapped. The world which these characters inhabit – seeming at once fantastical, ancient, medieval, and slightly modern – is never as fleshed out as it could be: there is very little indication of what’s going on outside the immediate environs in which the story is set. This book is novella, pushing just under 60 pages, and one cannot help but imagine how this story easily could have been stretched into a full novel. Then again, the end of the book does advertise more in the series to come (and indeed, the ending sets up a sequel rather nicely.)
TO KILL A KING sets up a dark world, full of cruelty and violence, unfolding in a wonderfully episodic and fairy-tale like fashion, to a shocking conclusion. Perhaps it could have been a bit longer, but what is there is enough to recommend the book anyway.
A dark and enthralling short work of fantasy, TO KILL A KING is full of action, character, and even a few surprises.
~IndieReader.