Othila – Book one of The Turning Of The Sword

**In a world where ancient runes bind power to bloodline and breath, two destinies awaken on opposite sides of a crumbling nation.**

This is a book that requires some grit to stick with.

The story begins with Liam, an adopted child living in a tough farming valley, who is just coming of age. He explores some old ruins where he discovers Othila – Odien’s blade. When darkness descends on his home, the blade and his own history are revealed setting him on a journey to discover more and to save the Kingdom.

Concurrently we have the story of Elysia, a priestess of the Sacred Flame. Elysia is also coming of age and expected to undergo a “Melding” where a Priestess and a Knight are joined together to become one, powerful whole. Elysia discovers a hidden temple of her Goddess and finds that she is her chosen one.

The author has clearly put a lot of time into the world building – there are maps and promises for a complete eight book series on the website and the story is intriguing and (eventually) engaging.

Unfortunately to get to the good part you have to grit your teeth through some jarringly bad writing techniques.

While reading the book it becomes increasingly apparent that the author repeats some tropes. A lot. I mean a LOT.

For example, every character seems to have a sharp gaze and constant tension. The world must have held it’s breath more times than a free diver too.

"The air itself seemed to hold it’s breath"

Also, almost everything in this book is Not something else.

There’s lots of similes and metaphors that just don’t work for me too:

"Arrows jutting from their flanks like broken prayers"

The worst habit though is what I unconsciously started to call the Rule of Three: The use of three words to describe an object or action can be an effective way to add weight to the writing but the authors overuse of it starts to get very tiresome. Plus this one reads like a perfume ad:

"Quiet. Sacred. Inevitable"

Overall this isn’t a particularly bad book and if you can get past those annoyances you’re rewarded with some great battles and lore that does give me hope that the series will improve with the next volume.

** I received a free Kindle edition of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review **