Rise of the Ranger

TL;DR: very convoluted story where the characters are forced to take actions due to plot contrivance.

Character actions: Most actions characters take don't make sense, such as an assassin who's prosecuted volunteering to go to an organization that exists to hunt and kill every assassin on the continent. Or a plot about a group of people trying to access a place through the most convoluted and ridiculous plan that is utterly pointless from the start and that could have been resolved straightforwardly.

Death: The story also relies on death for the sake of portraying death with no emotional weight behind it, serving as either motivation for a character (in the most basic and boring way) or for making the story ‘mature' and “having stakes” rather than the death having meaning in the story.

The world races: The difference between the two primary races in this world boils down to outward appearance and minor innate racial characteristics that are relevant based on the need of the story. No cultural or behavioral difference is mentioned or tied back to the plot at any point.

Shock value: Apart from deaths, some scenes seem to be written to evoke an emotional reaction and create stakes without impacting either story or characters outside of an immediate plot point being conveyed. It also goes back to why characters behave the way they do, which is left unresolved.

Plot: The plot just ends. There isn't any conclusion to a plotline or an understanding of what everything leads up to, apart from telling the reader about a villain's resurrection that was so hamfisted and plot-breaking that it conveyed no emotion. Even before the ending, most of the story is very limited in its plot, and most of the time, characters are doing stuff to do stuff; rather than following any throughline (this also goes back to character actions mentioned previously).

Fight Scenes: Although the fight scenes were functional and engaging, most end when the losing side is decapitated, slashed in half, or otherwise ridiculously injured, making their death immediate. The author's blurb about him being first and foremost a fan of Sci-Fi explains this phenomenon as most swords behave like lightsabers, and no one is holding any melee weapon other than a sword.

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There are some positives, such as a complex plot that consists of several moving parts and an intricate political structure. Unfortunately, in this case, the bad outweighs the good.

The cover alone made me purchase this book. Well, I mean, I also did check out some of the reviews it was getting, but that cover was what sold me. While the cover is awesome, it's the contents within the book that is even better!

Rise of the Ranger is the first book (in a series of nine) in The Echoes Saga by Philip C. Quaintrell. This is an indie and self-published author and frankly, I'm surprised no major publishing company has picked this up yet. This book is basically a love letter to the fantasy genre. It combines classic and modern fantasy and has a little of everything.

The story follows a large cast and I can honestly say, there wasn't one character or story that I didn't like. In fact, I enjoyed all of the characters. It may seem a little bit of a stretch for some characters to instantly like each other but considering how I pretty much love everything about this book, I'm willing to forgive that.

While reading this, I told myself that when I finished I was going to start reading something else. However, I enjoyed it so much, I decided to go ahead and immediately jump into the next one to finish the first trilogy.

I can only hope that someday we will get nice leather-bound special editions of this series. I'd immediately snatch those up!