Monday, January 20, 2025

Official Book Review: Kingdom Society: The Black Hood by Nathan Helm

I have finished Kingdom Society: The Black Hood by Nathan Helm and, as the author requested, now give it an Official Book Review. (And if  it seems like I read it surprisingly swiftly well, that is what a week of unexpectedly free evenings and a three-day weekend will do.)

Will somebody tell me how to write a review for something when almost everything one can think of writing would constitute a not insignificant spoiler? So I shall focus on what makes this book special: its uniqueness.

Every author has things they do best, and Nathan Helm's is a very fast plot and flashy – very visual – magical battles so well described that it is like watching an anime (which comes as no surprise since the book was partially inspired off such). Add that to merging Sci-Fi with Fantasy, time-travel, Eight Kingdoms instead of the stereotypical Seven, and a startlingly talkative and very hard to kill enemy in the Black Hood Lord Zallrahn or whatever the fiend chooses to call himself, and one has a book which you literally never know where the next page will take you. In short, Kingdom Society: The Black Hood bends and blends genre tropes and tricks into a most unexpected knot. Goodness knows I do not envy Alyeth, Cindril, the rest of House Zane plus Xylock trying to untie it.

(P.S. If you, dear reader, are an author/publisher and reading this review makes you want to ask me for a review too then PLEASE read my Contact Me? page.)

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