Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange of my honest review.

3/5 stars

This book starts with our main character Kensey Vardallian being the narrator of his misadventures to his captor The Black Empress of Pileaus. His story starts with the murder of his grandfather in front of him and an important journal of a Vardallian ancestor being stolen from him by the same villain who killed his grandfather. Kensey decides to get his vengeance when he met some odd characters who ended up being pirates from the famous ship The Black Yonnix who where also looking for the journal. From there the story and the adventures of Kensey begin.

For me, the book started really slow and it got intersting just after chapter 10. I was looking for a book with more adventures on the ocean and the developement of our main character's personality but at the end, we met for a short time with the impressive captain of The Black Yonnix, then, the story Kensey tells is just about how he gets back his journal with the help of two pirates; one being Blue a Manii which is a fox with magical powers who talks and plays some magical music that could be helpful in many dangerous situations , the second being Ulysses the first mate of the Black Yonnix who tells stories like no one, these two characters made the story so much entertaining in addition to other interesting characters that appeared shortly. We don't know what happened to kensey after or about all his adventures with the pirates and how he ended up being captured by The Empress. The ending was lacking and, I didn't like Kensey at the end or while he was telling his story.

I loved the world created by the author and his writing was pretty interesting. I don't know if he is going to finish telling us all the story of Kensey, his tatoo and The Black Yonnix in his own future books or if we will find out about it in The Unmade Man by D.T. Gooden which we have the first two chapters at the end of this book.

I'm interested in the stories and the adventures of The Black Yonnix's crew and Nyomi and her husband and so on. I hope that the author will be thinking about a sequel.

The Black Yonnix: A Bitter End is a rollicking fantasy full of pirates, thieves, royalty, derring do and dastardly doings. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to read any of the above! It also has a wealth of world building detail, with unique races, religions and magic systems all well thought out and full fleshed.

Kensey Vardallian is both the main character of the story in the past tense and the narrator in the present as the main body of the book is his relating the tale of how he came to be aboard the infamous pirate ship 'The Black Yonnix' in the present time to his captor the Empress of Pileaus. It sounds confusing but it works. Kensey starts out as wet-behind-the-ears green as any peasant turned hero ever has, but the Kensey relating his tale to the Empress is a bit more wise to the way of the world and the twists and turns his life has taken. I'm curious as to exactly 'how' much time has elapsed here.

This story ends rather abruptly. Leading me to believe that Mr. Colby has more stories in the works that will hopefully be released sooner rather than later. Because I really, REALLY want to know more about what's to become of Kensey, the crew of the Black Yonnix and the world of Pileaus.

The title also includes 'A Story of Pileaus' and this galley contains a 2 chapter preview of 'The Unmade Man' by D.T. Gooden. The main character of this story, Boruin is referenced in The Black Yonnix so it seems to be a potential shared universe situation reminiscent of the 'Wild Cards' or 'Merovingian Nights' series. Which makes me VERY excited for things to come!

I am very appreciative of NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my thoughts and a review. As stated at the beginning, if you like your fantasy fun but with some depth to it. This is the book for you!

The Black Yonnix: A Bitter End by Scott Colby Review

The Black Yonnix: A Bitter End is a superb pirate-themed fantasy novel that gave me the same sense of adventure as one of my favorite classic pirate novels, Treasure Island. It's an excellent book with a great cast of characters.

Platforms: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Outlander Entertainment
Price: $15.95 (Paperback), $7.99 (Digital)
Author: Scott Colby
Publisher: Outlander Entertainment
Release Date: October 6, 2020
No. of Pages: 246
Genre: Fantasy, Pirates

Intro
Hello everybody, it's been a little while, but I'm finally back with a new review! In this one, I'm covering a very entertaining book called The Black Yonnix: A Bitter End by Scott Colby.

It's actually known only in my small group of friends that I'm actually a pretty humongous fan of pirate-themed novels and other forms of media. I'll admit that my current repertoire of reading pirate books is rather small as of right now but the ones that I've read have been great. My favorite is currently Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Very old but very good book.

Going into The Black Yonnix I was expecting it to be another revenge story because I was still very much in the mood for another one after reading The Count of Monte Cristo manga for my previous review. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I wound up enjoying this book though, and while there is indeed a revenge plot, it's actually a very small part of the story. I'll get into the full details regarding this shortly.

I was also really surprised how unique this book wound up feeling as well. It doesn't use the pirate cliche's that were present in the likes of Treasure Island, and its fantasy setting also felt very unique as well. It even had unique fantasy species, religions, and unique regions as well. As an example, the beings known as the Shuen are water-based creatures and I kinda pictured them as being like Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which I think fit them pretty well, it definitely made them feel as menacing as the book wanted you to think they were.

The book is not your run of the mill fantasy novel and that fact wound up making me like it even more. I'm actually not as big on the fantasy genre since many of them feel so similar to each other but The Black Yonnix is a fantasy book that I can definitely approve of.

Story
The Black Yonnix follows a young man named Kensey Vardallian who is a Yuinite that had been captured by The Black Queen of the Empire. The entire story is a flashback retelling of the events that lead up to Kensey's capture by the Empire.

Kensey's journey is a pretty eventful one, to say the least. Kensey plots his revenge upon the tax collector that kills his grandfather in front of him quite early in the story but this becomes more of a subplot pretty quickly and doesn't actually reappear until quite late in the book.

While stewing in his anger, Kensey meets an anthropomorphic fox named Blue who he brings to his city center. Unfortunately for Kensey, Blue turns out to be a pirate and is quickly kidnapped and brought aboard the fabled pirate ship The Black Yonnix.

The book gets quite exciting from this point forward but I want to avoid spoiling too much of the story. Let's just say that this is the moment where things begin changing for Kensey and leave it at that.

This book's story was very good all in all. I wound up liking just about all of the characters in the book and it actually gave me the very same sense of adventure that I got when I first read Treasure Island. There were also a couple of parallels that I couldn't help but piece together.

The captain of The Black Yonnix was a very imposing man, and he gave off the very same feeling as Long John Silver. Kensey felt very much like the young Jim Hawkins as well. I definitely found it entertaining.

Setting
The book takes place in a unique fantasy world that I couldn't help picturing as a bit like the Caribbean since it was an archipelago and there were a lot of islands with jungles that the characters traveled to.

Since this was a fantasy novel it the world was filled with some pretty unique wildlife and creatures. On Kensey's island, there was a giant bear creature that he encounters which was pretty wild.

There are also a bunch of unique races in this story as well. They include the Marii, Shuen, and the Aeimer make appearances. The Marii is the anthropomorphic fox creature and many of the ones who we encounter in this story are bards. The Aiemer are ancient beings of magic and only one of them makes an appearance in this story.

There's also a parallel dimension known as The Dreaming Land but this isn't widely explored in this book yet. There's a character from The Dreaming Land that makes an appearance late in the story though.

As you can see, The Black Yonnix features a pretty unique and fascinating world and I'm definitely eager to read more about this world if there are any sequels planned.

Pros
Excellent World Building
Unique World Filled With Interesting Creatures, Races, and Places
Interesting Cast of Characters
Fills You With A Great Sense of Adventure
Doesn't Feel Like A Traditional Fantasy, or Pirate Novel
Cons
I honestly have zero complaints with this book, it was fantastic and I had a lot of fun reading it.

Final Verdict
Overall, The Black Yonnix is easily one of the best fantasy and pirate-themed books that I've read in a very long time. As I mentioned, the fantasy genre isn't one that I venture into very often (Unless it's children's fantasy novels) because everything feels too similar to each other or they're romance novels in the guise of a fantasy novel. I didn't get this feeling from The Black Yonnix and I genuinely enjoyed it an immense amount. If you're in the market for a fantasy novel that will rekindle your sense of adventure then I can't recommend The Black Yonnix enough, it's great.

Since I enjoyed this book so much, I've decided to give it my highest score, 5/5 stars. If you happen to pick up the book on this review's recommendation, I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.

Thanks A Lot For Taking The Time To Read The Review!