Paladins of the Storm Lord

I really enjoyed reading this. It is a great blend of sci-fi and fantasy. Great depth to characters and world.

Reviewed by Brandon Newsom

I loved this book. From the dialog to the characters to the world itself, this was a stream of constant surprises and discoveries.

Reviewed by Paloma Vergara

This was a truly enjoyable read. We first read about the incident that starts everything, the mishap with the ship and how everyone who was awake finds themselves with strange powers, and how the copilot, Duè, sends everybody else down to the planet below. 200 years later, we join the descendants of those colonists on the planet. Most of the empowered crew in orbit have claimed areas of land, and the people who live there as worshippers.

This story revolves around the Storm Lord, Colonel Dillon Tracey, and his Paladins and worshippers down below. Because the Storm Lord has gotten bored. He's decided to once again mess around with things on the planet. His special project this time is supposed to net him some slave labor out of one of the indigenous mammals to use to mine the scarce metal resources on planet. Something goes wrong with the experiment. And his fellow crewmates on board the starship have decided something must be done, so Dillon decides to make planetfall.

Meanwhile, in the Storm Lord's city of Gale, Lieutenant Cordelia Ross has been having strange encounters of the native species the humans call boggins. They seem smarter somehow. She is sent on a series of missions that have her interacting with the native sentients, the drushka. Things are going to get bad before they get better, and at the bottom of everything is the one thing that Ross hates most: politics. Ross and her friends, human and drushka alike, must struggle to figure out exactly what is going on just so they can survive it, and it's going to take all of them to come out alive at the end. She doesn't know who she can trust, and her thirst for vengeance might end up costing her everything.

A couple of themes here that are interesting. Dillon as a God is just as flawed as he was as a human, only now there isn't anybody who can stop him from doing what he wants. The other crewmen seem to be just as petty and shallow as Gods. The two exceptions are Lazlo, the healer who keeps everyone alive by regenerating their cells, and Duè, who seems to have all the powers of the others combined, as well as a few more. It seems like all of that power in a previously human body has broken her mind, and she seems more than a bit crazy to the others.

By the end of the book, it becomes clear that Duè is manipulating people and events toward an outcome that only she can see, and we can only hope that whatever her goal is, it's better for the colonists in the long run. There are many things unresolved and foreshadowed at the end of the book, so I'm assuming this is the first in a series. I would definitely pick up the next book.

It seemed a little slow in the beginning, but soon events were avalanching out of everyone's control, and the mad dash at the end kept me riveted. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who has a love of sci-fi.

Reviewed by Inked Rainbow Reads

"Paladins of the Storm Lord" is a science-fantasy adventure with magic powers, tech and aliens intertwined in politics, warfare, diplomacy and romance.

I loved this. The set up with a colony ship experiencing a disaster and the survivors developing God-like powers was quickly and effectively drawn, with the politics and interplay of those on the ship excellently established.

The world that the Paladins inhabited was fascinating, with their hoarded leftover technologies, lack of metal and structure built on centuries old recruitment videos.

I enjoyed the alien species and the almost by-the-by exploration of the moral issues the story invoked: what makes a person, what sort of experimentation is ok, is morality decided on a personal level or by religion?

Simon Lazlo was a fascinatingly flawed character who knows that what he has done is wrong, but at the same time is still proud of the positive achievements of his work. He knows that he should have refused Dillon's requests; knows that Dillon uses him just as much as the others and also knows that he would do it all again. I felt so sorry for him when he finally makes a decision he knows is for the best, is actively rejecting Dillon and the others and at the same time destroys any chance of a real, equal, loving relationship. While Cordelia is (I think) the main character, Simon was more interesting...

I'll be looking for more of Barbara Ann Wright's books.

Reviewed by Isobel Walter-Smith

This is one of the best books I have read in a very long time. I was completely enthralled and did not want to stop reading. This is one of those books that you can't wait to finish to see what's going to happen, but at the same time, you don't want it to end. The characters are wonderful, I loved them all, even the not so nice ones. The world that the author has created is fascinating, and I very much look forward to exploring it further in the upcoming sequels. This book gets my highest recommendation.

Reviewed by Michelle Nash