Review: The Marksmith

The Marksmith

by C.V. Dressman

Deep within the wrinkled folds of time, an unjust act by a just king brought about the desolation of a kingdom. For an age the secret of that discarded sin has lain chained beneath a sea of sand. Now, as a shadow seeps from the festering land and hope fades into the world of dreams, no secrets shall remain.
Crone has long been a thrall. He has long desired freedom. When the whispered words of a dream compel him to act upon desire, the archer Crone and his companions find themselves pawns in an unfinished game for power.
Hunted by the empire he defied and dark forces intent on keeping the secret of Divine Sin sequestered, Crone must choose his fate. It may well shatter the spirit of friends and burn the soul of an entire world to ash...for in the gathering storm of war, the Marksmith learns that freedom may be the harshest master of all.

**1/2

2 1/2 Stars

About half way through this book I started to get the feeling that this book was birthed from short entries written when the author found the time. Now I'm not sure if this is what really happened, it just seemed like it.

Everything seems to be told in spurts. A few paragraphs here talking about one thing, and marker to separate everything than a few more paragraphs talking about thing else, or just fast forward in the future some. Having the story told this way made the characters very one dimensional. I had a hard time finding any reason to like anyone because I never got the chance to really know them. Reading a book like this is hard, if you don't care for the characters you don't care about what they are up to.

I also found myself confused a lot. Not really sure of everything that was going on. There seemed to also be a lot of pointless sex going on. . .but at least this was tastefully done. It is in no way anywhere close to an erotica, and I was happy about that.

The concept of the book was good, though I found myself not really liking the characters to much after a while the plot was good. I am a sucker for quests like Crone found himself on. But I still found myself confused a lot during the entire read, like the test that Crone goes through at one point in the book had me scratching my head wondering what the hell was going on.  The ending was interesting, didn't see a lot of it coming so that was nice.

The book is told from a few different point of views, this is something I really love, and it was done well. I could easily figure out who was who. This at least made me very happy.

I'm not one that usually complains about grammar or editing issues, because really how am I to point these things out when I am horrible with them myself. But there are a lot of very glaring issues the farther you get into the book. Words not capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, or the one I found the most instead of had it would be hand. A quick go through and these things can get cleaned up nicely.

Would I recommend this book? Eh, its a maybe. . .it would really depend on the person. The author has talent, I'll give him that, he just needs to work on his character development and a few other things.