Excellent book with incredible artistic annexes. i loved the main characters illustrations which are so vivid. I am definately a fan of the Irawenti elves: progressists, humanists and braves. The gods save Arwela!

I started the book and just couldn’t get into it. I just didn’t enjoy the writing. It’s possible that it improves later on but I have so many other books to read that I just couldn’t do it

Like Tolkein, this book is very long on description. It was a gorgeous tale, but took its time getting there. I liked it, but hope the following books move quicker.

I was very disappointed in this book. It is clear that the author has spent a lot of time, and probably enjoyment, developing this complex world and has developed almost a language to distinguish between the inhabitants of the world both as individuals and as races. However, for the reader the story is hidden underneath this language. I found it extremely difficult to get past the names of the characters which made it more than a little confusing as I couldn't rememember where people fitted. It was a long way into the book before I had developed my own way of categorising characters but this detracted from the story. I also found the book very wordy. On the positive side once the reader is able to get past all this there is a very good story underneath. The question is of course whether it is worth the effort and I have to be honest and say I am not sure that it is, certainly not for one book and possible not for two.

This book was..... weirdly difficult to get into.

Of course, I usually love anything high fantasy or with elves, but this one was slow to start and hard to follow. Admittedly, I just couldn't force my way through it and I gave up about a quarter of the way through (which is why I didn't give a lower review, I hate giving starred reviews when I don't finish a book);

This was a very complex and fascinating Sci-Fantasy about the lives of elves and their battles against the humans and search for a better life. Detailed descriptions and the construction of the story was excellent. Easily able to picture what was happening and a great conclusion.

Epic fantasy that I found suffered from being far too wordy. It started off pretty well with a hazardous sea journey, but then bogged down. I eventually found myself just skimming until I found some dialogue or something happening. The author seems meticulous in his development of the world, language, etc., but needs to focus more on pacing.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free e-ARC of this book.

I don’t read a lot of high fantasy. A book needs to be really special to attract and hold my attention. I decided to give this a shot after I got an email from NetGalley promoting the book and describing it as comparable with a favourite series, The Lord of the Rings. I think this comparison is very generous. The book isn’t brilliant nor is it terrible, it straddles somewhere between both. I thought there were too many characters in the book and some of the name sounded similar which I struggled to keep a track of. I don’t mind a big cast of characters but I need to be able to keep them all straight in my head as I read. The writing was okay but at times I felt the author is trying too hard to mimic Tolkien rather than develop their own style. There are footnotes to explain some of the world building. These were awful and lost the author one star. Footnotes are a no, esteemed authors. Total crass. There is some good stuff here and I may check out other books to see how the author’s style develops.

I loved this novel. I stayed up all night reading and this fantasy story did not disappoint!
Highly recommend if you are looking for something mind blowing!

I’m sorry to say that I couldn’t get into this book. It moved too slow for me and the characters were confusing at times. I’m sure there are people who enjoyed it but it wasn’t for me.

This is a High Fantasy with an interesting concept. The characters are mostly elves of the Tolkienesque sort and apart from perhaps too many 'exotic' names to keep straight, I found the characters mostly distinctive and likeable. After all, who doesn't like elves?

The writing, while technically fine, felt a little forced, like someone trying too hard to become the next Tolkien. There was a fair bit of 'telling' in the first chapter and to my horror, footnotes to explain elements of the world building. This really killed it for me.

The plot varied in pace, but was overall typical of a quest story. Fantasy fans will know what I mean. Apparently there are to be twelve books, which I think might be overly ambitious. Definitely targeted to a Fantasy audience with the patience to unfold the greater story arc.

An Act of Faith is an epic fantasy novel, the first in a planned twelve-book series. A group of elves sail across the Austral Sea to find islands where others of their types settled a long time before. They find many other elves though they aren't necessarily greeted with enthusiasm.
The book starts out in a promising manner. The sea voyage is exciting and there's a concise cast of diverse characters and backstory. However, I found the book to gradually slow. There are dozens of new characters introduced and so many new places that I frankly became confused, especially when sometimes characters use names and others their titles. The author was good enough to provide some endnotes, but because of the profusion of people names and place names, I would have liked a character list segmented by type of elve and relationships, as well as a map of the countries/places so I could identify the place names.
The writing is Tolkienesque, somewhat stilted, but I was fine with it for the most part. However, it really slowed things down by the time of the council as each character arose to speak for several pages. While I recognized some of the speakers, there were others who seem to have just appeared and I wasn't sure what their motivation was or why they were there. That may be due to my own confusion with tracking all the characters, but I found it hard to care what they were saying when I had no idea who they were.
This may be an interesting world but I suspect it looks better as a game like Elder Scrolls than in a book. I want to thank Netgalley for providing the book for an honest review.
P.S. I really liked the cover.

Disappointing long fantasy novel, not for me!

I’m surprised about how tedious this fantasy novel is. After an action-packed first (long) chapter, there is little action for much of the first half of the book. The writing can be stilted, cliched and not every noun needs an adjective or a simile! The author throws loads of Elvish names at the reader so try keeping track! There’s a bucketload of explanations about the Elves’ history. Halfway through, I decided that life’s too short to spend on this epic slow-moving tale. The author has obviously spent a huge amount of time putting this vanity project together. Good luck with it!

I asked for this book because I loved the cover and it sounded like it would be an enchanting read. Unfortunately for me, the complexity of the world-building and the strangeness of the names and places just got in the way of the story. This may be a book that is best read in hardcover so readers can easily go back and forth between pages.

I received the book free for my honest review.

Summary: Sailors from the Elvin kingdom of Essawylor seek to cross the Austral Ocean in search of a lost archipelago, the legendary ultimate refuge of the Elves. Their arrival on the shores of Nyn Llyvary triggers a devastating series of events. The drums of history resound anew; life across the Lost Islands will never be the same again.

Review: I found this book hard to follow as there is no glossary for helping you pronounce the names, those you can’t connect with the characters. I could not finish the book since I could not connect with it. What I did read was well written and edited.

This sounded good in theory. I read how the author, years after he played the tabletop role playing game, just couldn’t let go of this story and wanted to write a 12 book series.

I love fantasy stories and it sounded promising, but when I started and there were all these footnotes and 20 different names within the first chapter, I couldn’t get very far. Sorry, but this wasn’t my cup of tea.

I received this ebook copy from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I won’t be reviewing this book on other platforms.

An Act of Faith, we are told in the author’s introduction, too five years to complete. The writing is entertaining and well-developed.

I would readily use this book as a mentor text for other authors who wish to create a vivid fantasy world that balances the richness of otherworldly characters alongside the needs of plot.

Fun fantasy that’s well done.