Seasons of Albadone

This is an excellent set of four connected fantasy stories. The authors are able to get you care about the characters quickly. The world is very interesting and has a Grimm’s fairy tale kind of feel. It was very interesting seeing how they connected each story while showing you a broader view of the world. I would highly recommend this as a quick read between bigger fantasy books.

A short, fairy tale style read, but the old school kind of fairy tales where Hansel & Gretel murdered the witch at the end. Four separate but connected stories, one for each season, take us through some rather dramatic developments in Albadone.

I enjoyed this, and would've rated it a 4, except for a couple things: it felt perhaps too short (204 pages), so I ended up caring less for the not very deeply developed characters than I think the author intended. Also, it could've benefited greatly from an editor. Numerous plainly wrong uses of words and phrases - “stood to his feet”, using “donned” as an adjective, etc. - as well as the unnecessary italicisation of so many words, bumped me out of the story regularly.