A well written set of fantasy Novellas.  The characters are great, the world building is fantastic.  A fantastic read for fans of fantasy.

OVERVIEW: I've been reviewing the books individually as I go, so I'm going to post those here as well, but first I'll try to give kind of an overview. My separate ratings are 3 stars for books 1&2, 2 stars for books 3&4 and 1 star for book 5. As you can tell, I started out trying to give this series the benefit of the doubt. I thought 'well I'll just give it time to warm up', but it never did and I just kept getting increasingly frustrated. Basically the characters are 2-dimensional [except for maybe Never, but even he is such a high fantasy trope that I would be hesitant to call him a fully 3-dimensional character], most of the plot consists of them walking places interspersed with 'problems' that are solved with ridiculous ease or by complete coincidence, and the 'answers' you get in the final book are not really answers at all and definitely not worth the wait. Maybe if I had been able to space out my reading over several months, but reading them all together it was just like so much more of the same thing. 

BOOK ONE [3 stars]: This was a decent start to the series, but it didn't really pull me in. Also if you're planning on reading this series I would definitely recommend you read the short prequel story first. If I hadn't read that I imagine I would have been going 'wait? what?' a few times in this one. It's a decent little treasure hunting story although I honestly wish there had been more obstacles, or at least that Never didn't solve all the problems immediately. Everything just seemed too easy, like he would just look at a puzzle for a few minutes and then figure it out. And the other characters didn't really seem to contribute that much, it would have been nice if there had been some puzzle Never couldn't figure out and one of the others did instead. Also I just feel like there is no excuse anymore for not having any female characters in your novel [no I'm not counting that random girl that was there for 2 seconds in the beginning], but the stories are pretty short so I'm willing to give the next one a try.

BOOK TWO [3 stars]: I did find this book a little bit more enjoyable than the first one. We have exactly one (1) prominent female character now [sigh]. I felt like the plot was a little bit better this time around, they had to work a little bit hard to overcome their obstacles instead of Never just amazingly figuring out 20 different puzzles immediately. These are decent books and they're very fast reads, but there is just nothing about them so far that sets them apart to me or really pulls me in. Everything is just very standard high fantasy and while there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that, it doesn't really do anything to make this series stand out from the 5 million other high fantasy series out there.

BOOK THREE [2 stars]: There are several reasons I rated this book 2 stars instead of the 3 I have been giving the rest of the series, but the biggest one is because I think it suffers from what I call 'middle book syndrome' A.K.A. NOTHING HAPPENS IN THIS BOOK. It's basically just a way to get Never from point A [where he ended book 2] to point B [where he needs to go for the next book] and in between there's just a whole lot of rowing and not much else. 

Also "River God" ??? I mean I guess it's the giant fish he kind of meets once, but literally none of the 'plot' revolves around the river god so why is that the name of the book? I guess because "Lots of Rowing" is not a very enticing book title. I'm hoping the ending of the series makes this all worth it because I'm starting to feel like I'm wasting my time and I probably wouldn't even continue if I didn't have an ARC of all five books. Also it's revealed that Never's mother died because she got raped and murdered, can't have a great high fantasy book without women getting raped and murdered, amirite? [loud sighing] Why can't she just have been murdered, why do you always have to bring rape into it?

BOOK FOUR [2 stars]: This series just ...has no substance really. Never's entire personality is a high-fantasy cliche and the secondary characters are all entirely two-dimensional. And the plot is just him walking from one place to the next and like maybe getting captured a few times along the way, but he always gets out of the situations WAY too easily. Like I am never sitting here biting my nails going 'oh no what's going to happen next!' because you already know because it's the same exact thing that's happened in the last however-many books.

Also [SPOILERS] how is it that he's been searching his ENTIRE LIFE for answers about his past and found LITERALLY NOTHING but the absolute second he leaves the Amber Isle literally every person he meets is like 'oh yeah you're Amouni I can totally tell let me give you all this information.' And of COURSE he gets captured by some woman he used to sleep with [who is now sleeping with his brother, are you KIDDING me?] so she helps him escape. Can't roll my eyes hard enough. And before he always had to use his blood to open doors but now apparently the rocks can just sense he is Amouni all the way through his shoes when he so much as steps on them? Seriously??? Like I said, everything is just way too easy and falls into place in a way that is completely unbelievable. 

And the things that don't fall into place are just ENTIRELY not explained. I mean I'm still holding out hope that the last book is actually going to give me some answers, but so far their reaction to every weird puzzle just seems to be 'yeah, why not'. In all honesty I think the main reason I've been giving this series 3 and 2 stars [instead of 2 and 1] is because they're short so it's like, they're not that good but also at least they don't take long to read.

BOOK 5 [1 star]: Standing on its own this would probably get bumped up to 2 stars, but at the end of a series that I just kept getting increasingly bored and frustrated with, it's a 1 star. I struggled with this. I kept trying to focus because hey we should finally be getting some answers, but my eyes just kept glazing over. And we didn't even really get the answers anyway. Like the only reason I continued w/ this series after the first book and got this ARC was because I wanted to know about Never's heritage and what we do find out is just a series of increasingly ridiculous things ending with 'Well maybe it's for the best that I don't know most of it! The ~journey~ was the important part!' Ugh. Sorry but this series just has no pay-off. The characters are all 2-dimensional and the plot fluctuates wildly between extremely boring and too far-fetched / unexplained to take seriously even in a fantasy environment.

Despite not being my usual type of book, I was very pleased with this series. The first three were incredibly fast and action-packed reads filled with snappy dialogue and just enough of Never's story to keep you interested. The last two books delved more fully into the story of Never's heritage and his extraordinarily complex family history. 

One thing that I really, <i>really</i> liked about these stories was the way the author went about building the world. Never's story takes places in some other reality where things as we know them don't always exist. The world is in the middle of a hostile takeover and there are a lot of pieces that kind of go along with this. What I've found happens a lot of times with this is that there's a portion of the story that's heavy with exposition and forces you to try and remember all the major players and events that aren't yet relevant; that didn't happen at all here. 

We were thrown directly into the story and important things kind of came up naturally. I found this fantastic for two reasons, really; 1. the front end of the book wasn't weighted down with history that you need to try and remember as you progress through the book, and 2. I found that I really wanted to know more about what was happening after getting little bits and pieces as I went. Each place Never and his various companions traveled had a story that was either delivered to the reader through small amounts of exposition that usually gave you a bit more of Never's history or through dialogue. 

Overall, I found this to be a very well written and enjoyable read. If you're looking for a fun read with a clever hero, a unique story, and a loyal group of sidekicks, I would highly recommend this book.

3.5 stars

There were some flashes of brilliance and originality in this collection of stories about Never and his mysterious heritage (including his real name). It was an exciting blend of myth and adventure, with rapid pacing that fit the condensed form of each offering. Yet it was one of those books I felt was not quite there yet. The author has talent, presenting the reader with a good tale, but the components were just slightly off: the dialogue just that bit too slow, obvious, or prosaic; the comedy just missing the mark; the next plot point a little too clear. It reminded me of reading the early Jim Butcher books, where you can see the seeds of what makes great fantasy writing but is firmly in the growing stage. Ashley Capes has that same feeling, one to watch.


ARC via Netgalley.

Is having a name like Never a good thing or a bad thing? Hmm... The Book of Never is really five smaller books in one bigger book but I call it one great book.  Never goes searching for his "true name" and answers to his past but finds more questions and a ragtag group of people who are more family than his own.

This is an enjoyable series of fantasy books about our main character, Never, who while on a quest for answers about himself etc. comes across various adventures and mis-adventures. And I did like how, almost like some fantasy games and I suppose D&D, the main character would get side tracked by a side mission or decide to help out a new character along the way into solving some mysteries he has about himself. Not a spoiler I believe, but Never has some interesting traits that he's discovering which does make him a more fascinating character as both you and he, tantalisingly learn more as the stories unfold. Good work done here by the author!

The first book in the series, for me, was the best and had me gripped the most! As we meet Never, strange name I know, as a lone wolf type rogue of a character. Nothing original there, but it works fine. Although I'm going to lead on with a slight negative for me, in that as the series goes on...Never becomes less thief/rogue like as his character seems to change into a more rounded nice guy. And for me this didn't really fit or feel like character development, but almost as a new character, which was a shame.

The series concludes with book 5, Imperial Towers, where Never and his brother Snow (who is also an interesting character and arch enemy) come to a head.

So for fantasy fans, this is a good set of books to lose yourself in. I liked it.

Self-publishing used to be effectively disregarded and typed as "vanity publishing". Michael Sullivan's Ryrie series caused a major shift in the prevailing  attitude and now here comes Ashley Capes to put the cherry on that cake! The eponymous Never is the protagonist in a very well-written series of novellas/short novels which depict the strangely-gifted hero's search for his origins in a landscape torn by war and political strife. There are hints of Michael Moorcock's Elric series in here, faint touches of Tolkien, and I even thought I spied a little of comicbook hero Wolverine in Never's relationship with his brother, Snow. Notwithstanding that,  Never is very much his own kind of Cursed Hero and he carries an interesting little band of friends around with him. Replete with little original magic touches, entertainingly written, and populated with well-formed characters, The Book of Never makes for an entertaining read,