As part of Self-Published Fantasy Month and the #SPFMChallenge, I will be posting reviews all month long.
Today’s review is of Banebringer, by Carol A. Park.
The blurb:
Banebringers. Source of the bloodbane who stalk the land. Cause of a thousand wrongs. Despised. Cast out. Hunted.
Vaughn never asked for the powers of a long-forgotten moon goddess. But rarely do the gods give humans a choice when using them in their machinations. Now Vaughn is a Banebringer, loathed by all who discover his true identity—even his father, a man obsessed with his own power and bent on destroying Vaughn’s miserable life.
Vaughn is desperate to end his father before the madman ends him. But to do so he’ll need the skills of Ivana, a vindictive assassin with her own scores to settle. The only question is whether Vaughn can keep himself from becoming another of her targets long enough to see his father eliminated.
The review:
Banebringer has one of the more unique magic systems I’ve come across outside of a Sanderson novel. And like Sanderson, Park does a great job weaving in the hard magic system she’s developed with an intriguing plot and interesting characters, with a dash of romance, and a smattering of language translation and scientific experiments. But unlike Sanderson in Mistborn Era 1, Park’s magic system, while featuring loads of cool powers based on a pantheon of deities, is grounded by a horrific cost of overuse.
Our leads Vaughn and Ivana each carry with them traumas from their pasts that quickly intersect after the two survive a vicious bloodbane attack. The relationship and romance that develops between them is deep and complex, and is one of the highlights of the book. A host of secondary characters round out a well-imagined world that still leaves much to explore in the sequel Cursebreaker.