What an amazing start to an epic adventure! Potter has created for us an incredibly imaginative world full of both new species and classic fantasy. Like many epic fantasy creations, it is full of multiple viewpoints, many of which leave you hanging chapter by chapter and looking forward to the next switch. As the characters progress and come together in their adventure, the differing perspectives allow for wonderful character exploration. This book holds something for everyone - young women struggling to prove themselves on the battlefield and be recognized for their talents, a Prince who is not sure he wants to be a prince, outlawed sorcery and, of course, dragons! The depth of the dragons and the personality differences are truly wonderful and set the stage for the action. Cannot wait for the next installment.

Firstly, thank you to Author Kevin Potter, Publisher and Netgalley for the early access and opportunity to read and review Shadow of the Overlord – Book One of The Calamity Series.

This was a whopper of a book. Though the cover indicated it was Book One of The Calamity Series, it actually included four books, 179 chapters and 968 pages. I didn’t realise this until I had finished the First Book and then I looked at the number of pages. I’ll admit that I wasn’t mentally prepared for this Epic Fantasy when I first started, but continued on. You’ll have to excuse my review as I have had to flick back and forth between the ‘books’ with my thoughts.

The Overlord is an Epic fantasy which follows the life of Taliesmon a young woman who has always wanted to be part of the Dargoons – an elite militia who for centuries have trained the best of the best to fight off the Torthugra. Unfortunately, there have been no women join the Dargoon’s in living memory so she has a difficult road ahead. She meets a number of different people through her journey who later become friends and trusted comrades. These include Okara, a mysterious girl who’s strength and fighting prowess is unexpected in one so young, Prince Dargon of Moritz heir to the throne of the Free States, honourable, smart and a progressive thinker, and Rintalas, a half-elf of mysterious background, who is older than he looks and experienced in battle, honourable but with a secret mission he was tasked with from beyond the Spine of the World. Together the journey and fight for the freedom of humans alike against enemies of the likes they have never seen before.

Between Book One and Book Two, ten years has passed which at times throughout the book frustrated be because a lot of things happened during that time which were alluded to but you never got to actually know the details of. This included Taliesimon’s climb through the ranks of the Dargoons, Rintalas’s escape after his capture plus his relationship to Delkin and how it came to be, and Dargon’s journeying after leaving Moritz. It felt later in the book that it was a bit rushed because of all this missing information.

I enjoyed Dargon’s library scene. As a lover of all thing’s books, I could completely relate to his awe when he went to the library and it was described very well. I could picture it in my head and was envious of his experience.

Something I found somewhat difficult with this book is the sheer number of characters that I had to follow at the beginning of the book. Each chapter flicked to a different character. There was also a random character that was introduced Kuthiel for a few chapters in Book Two and I’m not really sure why. He had his own dedicated chapters as if he was a main character then was injured and he wasn’t referred to again once taking to healers. I found this odd. Having said all that, the pictures assigned to each character at the start of their chapter did help with keeping track of who you were reading about.

By Book 3 and 4 I found myself enjoying the characters more, and was starting to see and appreciate their personalities. It is likely because by that point they were journeying and fighting together which made it easier to follow and their personalities grew through the interactions with each other. The battle scenes in Book 4 were well written and probably the easiest part to read for me as were genuine page turning events.

The ending was good, in the sense that I was genuinely interested in what was going to happen in the next book and as discussed, I was finally invested in the characters and what is going to come next for them in their journey.

To summarize, I did enjoy Shadow of the Overlord. I felt if there was further world and character building in the beginning it would have done the book more justice overall. The book felt rushed later on due to the details missed in the 10 years between Book 1 and Book 2. Such a large piece of work would have taken a lot of time and effort from the author and I’m concerned that readers will not get as much out of it due this. Readers of epic fantasy will get their money’s worth from the book as it is quite extensive and has plenty of potential left in the series. The battle scenes were well written and I think probably the better parts of the work. The book ended well and if the reader continued to read until the end, I believe by that point they would be invested in the futures of the characters so the series has potential there.

I rate it 3 stars out of 5.

I hope you found this review useful and am happy to discuss further if contacted.