300 books           10 Judges            1 winner

The 1st of June marked the start of the sixth Self Published Fantasy Blog Off (details here.)  My Introductory post is here.  Stage 1 is now complete and the finalists can be found here. My previous five book reviews can be found here, here, here, here and here.  Today I am reviewing my sixth finalist.

Black Stone Heart is the finalist put forward by The Queen’s Book Asylum whose review can be found here.

I’ve been longing to read this author for some time and in fact have a copy of Beyond Redemption sat glaring at me from the bookshelf.  Given friends and other bloggers reviews I think I picked this one up with exactly the right expectations.  I expected grimdark and Fletcher delivers that in spades.  He also kicks off his story with one of the most intriguing beginnings to a character that I’ve experienced for some time.

Khraen is a man newly awakened as the story begins.  Well, I say a man but I’m not entirely sure at this point, let’s just run with that for now for the purpose of simplicity.  This is a character who seems to have sprouted fully grown from the earth, he has no memory of who he is or why he is here.  He feels drawn to travel in a certain direction, along the way becoming stronger as he progresses from eating insects and grubs to small animals as he becomes more adept. I confess that this opening grabbed my attention completely.  I was fascinated by the character from virtually the first sentence and could barely put the book down and, in actual fact I completed the read in two days if not less.

In terms of the plot, we follow Khraen on a voyage of discovery.  He travels the country seeking pieces of his obsidian heart.  A heart that seems to have been broken into pieces and scattered to the four winds, now being  carried by numerous characters.  Khraen is drawn to the pieces like a moth to the light and with each newly recovered piece he discovers a few more memories from his former life.  Now, you may be thinking, surely the recovery of these pieces of heart involves the death of the character carrying the piece – and yes, you would be right in thinking that.  It appears that there can be only one – or at least that is the case for Khraen – some of the other characters seemed more content to remain incomplete and were living happy enough existences, giving Khraen a wide berth.  Alas, Khraen has other ideas.

What I found fascinating about this is that as we set off on Khraen’s journey he possesses a certain naivety that makes his story enjoyable to read, which isn’t to say that he doesn’t commit crimes along the way, more that he has doubts, his memories are not exactly pleasant and definitely give him pause for thought and yet he continues with his pursuit.

Along the way he is massively influenced by two other characters.  Shalayn, a young sellsword who takes Khraen under her wing and initially shows him the ropes until the two form an attachment.  Shalayn seems to provoke in Khraen the desire to be better.  He struggles with his need to find the rest of his broken heart, knowing that he may become a person she can no longer abide and he definitely keeps secret some of the memories he experiences, not wanting to scare her away.  Henka is a different character entirely.  A necromancer who, for a large portion of their time together, hides the lengths that she goes to in order to maintain her body.  Henka is a driven individual but she wraps up her desires in a need to please Khraen.  She comes across as loyal, almost like a puppy in the way she seeks his affection and approva but I also find her manipulative.

I love the world building here.  We don’t spend great amounts of time in any one place as Khraen searches out his heart pieces but it’s none the less a fascinating place with a long history and I feel like we’ve only just scratched the surface.  There is magic, magic towers and schools, necromancy and demons to name a few, but what felt refreshing for me were some of the smaller elements such as the strange abandoned castle that Khraen was transported to during part of the story and the friend that he becomes reacquainted with.  I don’t want to say too much as this point but this particular ‘friend’ definitely turns things on their head a little, as he’s quite unexpected.

Let’s talk about the characters.  Well, I liked Shalayn, I can’t deny it, she appealed to me immediately.  Henka, well, no.  I confess, she didn’t win me over.  Nor did she try to.  She is unremorsefully herself, a necromancer, and even though she almost starts off with small steps, to gently ease us into her true character, it pretty soon becomes obvious that she’s pretty hideous.  Or is she.  She’s dead, she has no heart, she does what she does to survive.  Although, I guess what I would ultimately question is the fact that she goes to a lot of trouble (by which I mean she murders a lot of people) to maintain a body in pristine condition and to give the impression of a warm blooded living being.  Ultimately I didn’t like her and in his favour I wasn’t totally sure that Khraen was always enamoured.

Khraen?  He’s like his own worst enemy.  He is relentless in his search for heart pieces and memories – even though with each new piece he finds new reason to doubt what he may eventually become.  He doesn’t seem able to resist and the memories are undoubtedly having an impact.  Actions that he would have found abhorrent as he started his journey become more commonplace and easy to accept.  It’s like Fletcher slowly feeds us a character that does more and more horrible things, and yet we seem almost oblivious to just how bad he’s really becoming.  Like he can be redeemed.  It’s your basic ‘frog soup’ really.  Put a frog in hot water and it jumps out, warm it slowly and it sits there never imagining what’s about to happen – much like us unsuspecting readers. (for the avoidance of doubt – I’m going to say that no frogs were hurt, during the writing or reading of this book, or this review for that matter).

Criticisms.  Not a lot to be honest.  The writing is good, the pace is good, the journey is fascinating and thought provoking.  There was definitely an element of predictability to one aspect of the plot, but I don’t find that a real problem.  I did experience maybe a slight change in feelings towards the read around the middle mark, it’s difficult to put my finger on other than I was having doubts by then myself about Khraen which made me ultimately question just how bad he’s eventually going to become.  That being said, this feels like a natural progression and I only mention it because it momentarily seemed to slow me down somewhat (although, given I read this in two days you would be right in thinking this was a temporary blip).

Overall this was very easy to read.  It is very dark so you may want to be aware of that before making your mind up whether to read it or not.  But, it’s also fascinating and aside from all the food for thought what really compels me with this one is that I’ve become as curious as Khraen to find out what he will eventually discover and more to the point, to understand how he found himself buried in the first place with no memories to speak of whatsoever.

I received a copy courtesy of the author.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 8.5 out of 10 (4 out of 5 stars for Goodreads)