Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Review of the month, October 2013: By Sword and Star

The Library
#1

For each month I’ll make a thread here with the book’s details, including a link (or links) to purchase the book. (I will add the links later as the sites that sell the books are all obviously blocked by my work.) If you already have the book, feel free to post your own review of the book. These reviews may also be posted on any of the sites that sell the book.
There will be a link to each of these threads on the mail page of the FWG website. Just like with the link here, I’ll update the page with all the info later tonight when I get home.

Title: By Sword and Star
Type: Novel
Genre: Fantasy
Formats available: http://www.reneecarterhall.com/sword.html (all can be viewed here)
Rating/advisories: PG-13
Blurb: Prince Tiran of Silverglen may be heir to the throne of all Asteria, but he’s always felt more at home among the villagers, no matter how many lectures he gets from his father. But when the elk-lord Roden slaughters the royal family and claims the throne, only Tiran is left to avenge their deaths and take his place as the rightful king. His journey will lead him from the shadowed heart of his forest home into the treetops with the squirrel-clan of the Drays, across the western plains, and among the mysterious and deadly wolves of the Northern Reach. With his allies’ help, Tiran must become the king his people need him to be—or risk fulfilling an ancient prophecy that will spell the end of Asteria itself.

(Thanks to poetigress herself for setting up this lovely format for me to post the info)

I just started the book today, but got a nice bit read. It really is that slow at work right now. Looking good so far, but obviously I’ll post my review when I finish the book. Any of you that have read the book are welcome to post a review before me.

#2

(I reviewed this over at Goodreads, so have yourselves a helping of copypasta ;))

The unicorn prince isn’t looking forward to taking the reins of his father’s kingdom, but when his family is murdered and he is ousted from Astoria by elk usurpers, it’s up to Teiran to fix things. His quest to gather an army takes him to the treetop world of the squirrels and the bleak, snowy territory of the wolf people.

I liked By Sword And Star very much - it has humour, romance and character development, in a detailed and delightful fantasy setting. I would say ‘fans of Redwall will enjoy this’, but I enjoyed it and I can’t stand the Redwall books.

#3

Oh, so apparently I never added links to buy here. I should probably do that.

Anyways, I just finished reading. Here’s some notes from me.

My original thoughts on this book were also ones that said those who enjoyed Redwall would also enjoy this. Reading further, while the original statement may still hold true, my opinion changed.
This story takes another very unique twist on animal clans, utilizing the feral aspect of anthro creatures to the maximum.

A couple of minor plot inconsistancies aside (ones which I will not specify in this post as they would spoil parts of the story) this is a quite engaging read that really takes off on page one. The book introduces the major conflict much earlier than most that I see and does a decent job of keeping on track with that major conflict. Keeping with your story may sound like a simply concept, but I’ve seen far too many ‘mainstream’ titles that have trouble doing just that.

This story, to me, seemed like a set in the past version of Ben Goodridge’s White Crusade. They both utilize the primal pack aspect of anthro wolves very nicely. I think that anyone who liked that book will also like this one.

#4

All the various ordering links can be found on the BS&S page at my website:

http://www.reneecarterhall.com/sword.html

Also, I’m planning to stay out of this thread from here on out, unless I’m specifically invited in (to answer a question or such) – so just pretend I’m not here, everybody. :slight_smile:

#5

Thanks. I’ll update that soon, I swear. I’ve been so busy this week I haven’t been on a computer that’s not my work computer, and it’s a challenge to update threads with an iPhone.

#6

Well, I posted a review on goodreads as well, although it’s rather too verbose to simply copypasta here.

It’s a good book. Yes, we’ve all seen this general plot before, dethroned prince in exile develops what is necessary to take back his birthright, however it’s done in such an interesting manner that you find yourself putting your jade-colored glasses aside and simply enjoying the read.

Warning: This book is a facehugger. You will look up and suddenly wonder where those hours went. It’s an excellent read for the comfy chair by the fireplace when you don’t have much else to do, but don’t start reading it before bed or you’ll wake up with far fewer hours of sleep than you intended!

The characters are believable, the cultures are actually different (one of my pet peeves is to have anthros nothing more than simply people in costumes), the pacing is good. The villains are properly villainous, none of this whiny emo nonsense here.

Good book.

#7

Completely agree with the facehugger comment. I am an incredibly slow reader, and I flew through this book twice. It just pulls you in and you want to keep on reading. Admittedly, I loved some of the secondary characters in this novel and wish they could’ve branched off into their own stories. Notably the squirrel warrior Rikka, who prefers a few swigs of ale before battle to steady her hand, and the hardened, yet passionate wolf huntress Zeta. An excellent read.

#8

Given that discussion seems to be pretty much done, I’ll jump back in with a question – Sean, with your recent tweet re: explicit sex in books (and with the caveat that I haven’t read the blog post you’re referring to), I’m curious to know what you thought about the sexual content in BS&S. (With every draft I went through, those scenes got toned down until they seemed appropriate to match the tone and content of the rest of the book – just wondering whether you thought I was successful in that.)

#9

To start, the blog post was Kyell talking about how he’s been toning down the sex in his books a lot as time goes on, to the joy of large chunk of his readers. However, he was at a non-furry con (a gay con? I’m not sure) recently and the people were actually asking him which books had more sex in them and bought those books.
The point of the post was really to show that furries aren’t the sexual deviants. That’s just people in general.

Regarding BS&S, I think the sexual undertones were right. I don’t think sex needs to be completely excluded from books, but it needs to have it’s place. If it doesn’t advance the story there’s no point in it. The implied sexual encounter in BS&S served to increase Tiran’s relationship with…forgive me but I’m terrible with names. You know who I’m talking about. Anyway, it also opened up more of his softer side which was hidden beneath a lot of pain.

Now, if your book spent three pages talking about the different ways he thrusted into her, I might have had some things to say about that.

#10

Hm. Well, there are a lot of things I could probably say about those aspects of the fandom, but I wouldn’t want to get into that in this particular thread, so I’ll leave that aside. :slight_smile:

Regarding BS&S, I think the sexual undertones were right. I don't think sex needs to be completely excluded from books, but it needs to have it's place. If it doesn't advance the story there's no point in it. The implied sexual encounter in BS&S served to increase Tiran's relationship with...forgive me but I'm terrible with names. You know who I'm talking about. Anyway, it also opened up more of his softer side which was hidden beneath a lot of pain.

Eh, don’t worry about the names – I tend to forget character names within hours, or days at best, of reading a book, unless it’s something I reread or that makes a major impression on me. :slight_smile:

Now, if your book spent three pages talking about the different ways he thrusted into her, I might have had some things to say about that.

nod Since I knew I’d want to recommend it for roughly age 13 and up, I was trying to keep those aspects no more explicit than the sorts of things you tend to find in current YA fiction (and maybe less, actually, since YA can be a lot more explicit in recent years than it used to be).

#11

Here is my two bits’ worth: