The Emperor’s Harvest by R.A. Denny
Series: Mud, Rocks, and Trees, #1
First Published on April 9th 2017 by Amazon Digital Services
Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, Young Adult
547 pages
Format: Kindle
Source: Book Review Request
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Add on Goodreads
I love to listen to Baskrod’s stories. He describes warlike men with natural armor who hibernate in rocky caves and peaceful people who soar through the air in a forest of giant trees. His tales are full of foreboding dreams and ancient prophecies; royal palaces and strange creatures. My brother laughs at me. He says that the old fisherman makes it all up. But everything Baskrod has ever predicted has come true. So I have always believed his stories.
UNTIL NOW
Baskrod appears to have gone mad. He claims that the emperor is sending a murderous horde of evil men to destroy our village. “They will drink your blood!” he yells, wide-eyed while standing in the marketplace waving his trident. He has begged me to escape with him. But it is harvest time, and I must stay to help my family in the fields. Anyway, the emperor has no reason to turn against us. We pay our tribute.
If only we had listened to Baskrod.
The emperor planned his own harvest. His reapers were ax-wielding horsemen. And they were not harvesting crops. They harvested my people.
Now I am the sole survivor of my village. Baskrod claims that the one god has chosen me. He says I must travel to the distant capital of Tzoladia to save the world. Maybe Baskrod is right. Maybe it is my destiny. But I’m nobody. How can I save the world?
Review
This book was provided by the author for an honest review, and it took me years to finally read it, hah. Eventhough I love the Harry Potter and the A song of Ice and Fire series, I’m still adjusting in the adventure fantasy genre, so I keep on delaying to read this one until many years have passed, hahaha, sorry.
The Emperor’s Harvest follows the story of three young people that come from different lands. Each of them must go on an adventure to meet together on Tzoladia in order to fulfill the prophecy of saving the world from an evil ruler.
I actually liked the tone when I started the story, however, I think that the shifting of the POV is a little confusing. This one is narrated into multiple POVs, so each chapter has a different character POV. There’s only a few pages for each chapter so it was kind of hard to focus or to really get to know each character. Luckily, it was only on the first half of the story, *wink.
This story introduces a whole new environment with different sets of people, but my imagination wasn’t working lol, hehehe. It took me quite a while to finally imagine what their world and the characters look like. And I have to say that this story’s idea is pretty interesting.
In this first book, aside from getting to know the main characters, we also got to see the adventures each of them had before they could finally meet in Tzoladia to fulfill the prophecy. And I was actually pretty invested in it lol. Unfortunately, all of their little adventures were obviously not concluded in this book, so it was quite a cliffhanger. But on my end, I don’t think it was the “maddening” kind of cliffhanger so I’m ok with how it ended. It just made me want to read the next book even more lol.
Aside from the shifting of POV, I don’t think I have something that I don’t like in this story. The main characters were likeable enough and thank goodness there’s no annoying drama or conflict here.
Oh, before I forget, I have to mention that the original title of this book was Refuge and the name of the series was different as well when it was first published. And now that I’ve read this book, I have to say that the new names were more suited for this book and the series.
Seeing that this is only the first book of the series and there’s still six more to go, I am giving this one a 3 star rating. Definitely not a bad way to start a long series, *wink.
Check out my book shelf for book suggestions and recommendations!
Glad you could like the characters and it was relatively drama-free even if it got confusing now and then.
Yep, thankfully. Hopefully the next book would be more exciting and less confusing hehehe 🙂