Why? Why waste a good concept and an incredible start to a great story? Sometimes I wonder how some books start in a way that gets me addicted, and somehow lose the way after a while.

The story focuses on the possible escape of a dangerous deity, and the mayhem that is about to occur since said deity has also dangerous siblings. And every time those three are brought together, disaster follows their battles – battles in which armies of their followers bring forth blood and death.

Honestly, I loved the premise of this, and the beginning of the story was epic! It started with a BANG! And it really grips your heart, you know. The lore was detailed and made sense, and I couldn’t wait for the real action to come.

But… it never did.

I left it at DNF when I reached the 60% point of the book. At first, there were council meetings. And then some more meetings. And then more. And political talks, and sooooo many characters popping out without any chance for us to remember them or having anything worth noticing, really. I’m talking PAGES UPON PAGES about those things. Oh, and the empty investigation scenes, can’t forget those. And not. Enough. Action!

Need I say more?

***I was given an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinion stated in this review is solely mine, and no compensation was given or taken to alter it.***

It was a great book for a fantasy and I really enjoyed reading it. Thank you to net galley for allowing me to read this book.

It doesnt support or open after I download the pdf version of it. It's also not showing in my shelf in netgalley and I cant open it to read Please look into the issue and if you can send me the pdf in my mail ID- taniagungunsarkar@gmail.com I cant read the book from here. Please look into the issue

This book had an interesting ideas. What attracted me was the premise of a futuristic world where someone travels there for adventures. It kind of reminded me slightly of Warhammer and that sort of universe setting. The world building was quite good, there were quite a few interesting characters.

This is a sort of series that would be good for fans of the Witcher and Game of Thrones. The adventure is relative fast paced. Details are very well described. I will recommend it to friends that like fantasy/sci-fi adventure books.

30 %... That is how far I got. 30%. And truly, I really, really struggled to read this far. It’s a shame, because I usually finish a book no matter what. But with this book, it was just impossible for me.

In an entire universe, filled with inhabited worlds under the guidance of the conclave, gods have been sleeping. However, Amongeratix, one of the three fabled gods, son of the god-king, has escaped his prison.
Tolde Breed, a senior Inquisitor, is sent to investigate the escape and eventually capture Amongeratix before he can resume his reign of terror.

Good things first:

The cover is beautifully interesting. Together with the title, the main reason for me to read the synopsis. The plot seemed quite interesting and I was eager to start reading.

This book has many genres: fantasy, science fiction, drama, political intrigue and mythology. All genres I actually find interesting in combination with a good story.
The world building is very detailed and gives a good picture of how it looks like. I enjoyed how there was an old vibe going on, even with modern (futuristic) technology involved.

The first chapter started well, with some nice action and the pace was alright! The same can be said about the first part of chapter nine.

Now for the bad things:

It is incredibly slow! Slow in pace, slow in story progress, just overall slow. It has taken me over 2 weeks to get to 30 %. I just couldn’t be bothered. The book is told with a third-person omniscient narrator, which I don’t necessarily mind, but there are so many characters in this book, that it got really confusing as to which character he was speaking about.
Speaking of many characters… Each chapter introduced a bunch of new characters. And they were all pretty much named. It even got so far that I couldn’t remember names and had to figure out whether I had read about this person before and if so, what I had read. And that rarely happens, ever.
A characters list and a map would have been a great help.

Even with only 30 % read I felt like some characters could have been eliminated without hurting the plot to make It more readable.
So would have been a different choice of words. A use of many high vocabulary words, within sentences I didn’t find completely fitting. It was distracting, unnecessary and it took me right out of my reading flow. Which I couldn’t get into anyway, but this did not help at all.

And then the descriptions. I like details. They are necessary to be able to get sucked into a world that doesn’t exist. To be able for me to feel like I am there. There were plenty descriptions here. As I said, the world building part is very detailed and descripted. Which is good. What isn’t good is a description of more than 3 pages about very simplistic things or surroundings. Especially not when it keeps repeating thing. Overly descripting is a loss of pace and a loss of imagination.

Something else that bothered me was that almost all of the nine chapters were ‘telling’ me the story, and not showing me. which is a shame.

It Just really seemed to me that the chapter were so stretched out, it never really got to a story. It was just explaining characters and surroundings, with occasionally a turn back to the plot.

Overall the plot is something that could have made an interesting book, had it been executed better. It was just not for me.

I was kindly provided an e-arc by Net Galley. I've left this review voluntarily and all opinions are my own.

This was my first book by this author so was unsure about how I would get on with the writing style as I do with most books but when I got about 100 pages in, I couldn’t put it down.

So well written and very immersive and could connect with the characters and imagine the world around me!

The cover attracted me (yes, I am a sucker for great book covers. And the story. I love high fantasy and I was really happy when the publisher, Warfighter Books and Netgalley approved my request.

It is rare to have so many genres in a book - high/dark fantasy, science fiction, mythology, political intrigue, violence, and drama. In such cases, it is very easy for the author to mess it all up and create a mush.

But Christian Warren Freed has managed to tell a cohesive and riveting story. The world-building is something spectacular, and so are the character descriptions.

One of the three Gods, Amongeratix, has escaped from a high-security prison on the planet of Crimeat. It is up to Senior Inquisitor Tolde Breed to bring him back. Unfortunately, the said God is one of the deadliest, so Breed isn't exactly looking forward to capture him.

What Breed doesn't know is that Amongeratix, along with his two brothers are already working their wway through Crimeat. Each of them has a different quality that they can spread to the people.
The work of the Conclave to maintain peace on Crimeat with the Order of the Inquisition and the ruthless Prekhauten Guards is about to be undone. Breed must work swiftly to prevent humanity from ending.

The war details are good, which I read that the author, with his Army background, has a good grip over.

A good first book with just the right hook. Would love to read the entire series and other books by Christian Warren Freed as well.

Just a note: This is not an easy read or something to be read over the weekend. The passages are pretty descriptive, considering that there is a whole new world to build. Just take time to read and soak it all in!

I read the first few pages of this book and had to put it down. I guess I just didn’t care for the writing style. The writing style seemed kind of elementary and it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

I was given an ecopy of this book to review.

I liked this book. I could see it like a movie in my head, especially the action scenes. The first three ish chapters introduces new characters which I thought was interesting. I was gripped from the first chapter and the timeline is interesting.

I wasn't enamored with the characters and struggled with it. It was written well just the characters distracted me from a story

Dreams of Winter by Christian Warren Freed was definitely a good read! The cover of the book caught my eye and the description really made me want to read the book.

This book has a great mix of fantasy and science. I really enjoyed the aspect of the old gods mixing with this new world and new technology. The characters grabbed and held my attention throughout the book.

The plot was enthralling and kept the pages turning. I wanted to keep reading to find out what would happen next. I love action in books and this one did not disappoint!

I would absolutely recommend this book. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC for my honest opinion.

Dark fantasy meets hard space opera in this intense tale of old gods and new technology. Honestly, it’s worth reading this just for the phenomenal world building but I’m happy to report that the blend of myth and science, the well-rounded characters and the fast paced, engaging plot all bear up to similar levels of scrutiny. This was a wild ride and I can’t wait for the next book.

Thank you to NetGalley for sharing an e-ARC with me in exchange for an honest review! I was intrigued by this story’s plot but unfortunately, I had to DNF this book at 30%. I had two main issues with this story and one of them is a “it’s not you, it’s me” situation. This book was far more violent that I thought it would be. I knew it would not be a sunshine and rainbows type of story but within the opening chapters there was a massacre of an entire town and a slaughter/prison-break scene. That just really isn’t my cup of tea, but that is totally a personal preference and not a critique of the book itself.

However, my second issue with this book is with the writing style. The book is told with an omniscient narrator, which is fine, but I found there to be way too many abrupt shifts in character, sometimes in the middle of a paragraph! It was a little hard to follow and was a little bit jarring to read. The author also used too many “pompous” adjectives repeatedly within the span of a few pages. It would have worked and had more impact if words like this were used sparingly and spaced far apart. But I kept seeing “miasmic”, “portent”, “fetid” and “foul” used within the span of a few pages to describe the same thing (albeit sometimes from a different character’s POV. The chapter introducing Moffo laid it out to me that he was a “shallow man” no less than 3 times over the course of a few pages.

“Moffo Kain was a shallow man”

“Maffo was shallow and an opportunist”

“Moffo Kain was a shallow man, willing to forgo his own safety...”

You see what I mean.

I could tell the descriptions were meant to sound poetic and deep, but they just came across as nonsensical half the time (like “shallow rot gnawed at the dreamers”). Additionally, the author fell into the age-old mistake of “telling me” instead of “showing me” or showing me beautifully and then ruining it by telling me, in case I missed it.

“The people were frightened. That much was certain. An undertone of fear laced the smoke thickened air”.

A paragraph describing the broken landscape in a no-nonsense tone was followed by “A light miasma of suffering hovered just above ground level. The brownish mist was like a pall. Tolde and Mathias looked down on a scene of pure chaos”.

There were definitely moments where I saw great writing shine through, but these moments were overwhelmed by awkwardly formed sentences, long-winded descriptions and explanations that repeated the same concept over and over, and poorly chosen/timed descriptors.

It was difficult for me to get immersed in the actual story and plot when I felt like I was weeding through over-exhaustive descriptions to get to the point of what was happening in a particular scene.

If you didn’t mind the quotes I pulled out, then I think you would really enjoy this story! It is filled with political intrigue, multiple words with their own technology/ruling system, and a compelling concept (trying to reign in a godly being bent on destruction). Unfortunately, it just wasn’t a book for me.