“What happens to legendary adventurers when they retire?
Talen is a poor farmhand…but he used to be a famously quick swordsman. Now he has one last job, which could secure his family’s future: he must retrieve a cursed suit of golden armor from a mountain claimed by genocidal orcs. When Talen fails to return from his adventure, a motley crew of rugged ne’er-do-wells must deal with the mysterious person who hired Talen, as well as a family of berserkers. And retrieving the armor will take a grievous toll…”
Title: A Company of Adventurers
Series: Tales of Kjeldale #1
Author: Rune S. Nielsen
Page Count: 319
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Date Read: July 24th, 2022
| I had heard about this one from it being cut during the SPFBO 8 competition. I read the short review about it and it actually interested me so I picked up the digital version on sale and decided to work it in this month. Initial thoughts as I began the book was I had strong D&D vibes from it. We have a couple of different point of views with various characters throughout the book. This didn’t really bother me and I’m kind of use to it these days. About half way through I did start stumbling a bit with getting a couple of the characters confused. I believe this was mostly my own brain not computing or getting wires crossed but initially it was difficult for me to tell L.Q.C.L. and Weatherall apart unless they were in the same scene together. By the end I had these two down there. The one that lingered right up to the end for me was Dianne and the bald dwarf. I thought they were two different people, then I thought they were the same person and I believe I was right initially! I think what tripped me up with these two the most were the proximity of when they were both introduced and then the fact the dwarf was just constantly referenced as simply the “bald dwarf” which didn’t help matters for me. Other than that I really loved some of our main characters as well as supporting cast! Njorn was amazing by the end! The world building thought was nicely done in A Company of Adventurers. We get to know a little bit about several towns where the adventurers are originating from as well as an out of the way Inn where paths seem to meet before heading up to and under the mountains for the majority of the story. As I mentioned it definitely had those D&D vibes! I thought the descriptions of several areas were just amazingly done by Rune though. The pacing was fairly well. I mentioned in one of my updates I felt this book could have used another pass through the proofreader or editor as I did find several cases where the incorrect word was used or a sentence that had some duplication that rewinds the sentence a bit. The writing style itself was very easy to read. It just ruined the flow at times when I came across these issues and I found myself rereading the section to get back on track. There is definitely a lot of setup to action throughout the book though which keeps things exciting! Overall I truly loved this concept and the ending of the book even confirmed my suspicions of the D&D vibes. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with the remaining characters in future installments when Rune gets those out to the public! World Building 4.5/5 Pacing 4/5 Character Development 4/5 |
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