The Written

So I m not going to lie, this book was one i ve had my eye on for years because of the beautiful cover designs for the books Considering that this is a self published book and series, I think the fact that the covers are so beautiful is a great asset to the books because otherwise the likelihood of me buying the book or hearing about it would have been much less With that said, it s not just a pretty cover, in fact there s actually a very wonderful story contained within the pages of this book S [...]

Unfortunately, I was not overly impressed with this The cover art is great, which is why I picked it up I think it has cons than pros, alas.So let s start at the good points The idea of tattoos giving someone power, and different tattoos giving different powers, was really neat I liked the bond shared between dragon and rider, which altered the rider s appearance Though, this is not the first story I ve read where dragon and rider become inexorably linked The theme of addiction, which is rarely [...]

Sometimes your initial expectations of a book can leap twofold simply by its cover, this is one of those books, a mage walking away or into battle, sword in one hand and a fireball in the palm of his other hand Thankfully the book didn t disappoint in the slightest.This novel is set in a world called Emaneska, the Arka are ruled from their capital city Krauslung by the magick council the Arkmages To become a mage one must first go through the intense school of training and finally undertake the [...]

Overall Rating 3 1 2 Stars Review originally at Fantasy Book Critic ANALYSIS The Written is a debut book that I had no clue about but thanks to Mark Lawrence, I was clued to its existence Usually it s said never judge a book by its cover but in this case, I was ready to make an exception The understated cover really drew my eye with its stark color usage, so in this case I was ready to make an exception The book blurb didn t really do justice or give any idea about the plot content But I was tru [...]

I won this book through First reads.I have just finished the first chapter and I have decided that I will not read any because 1 The first chapter reminds me of my college freshman creative writing workshop classd that is NOT a good thing.2 Actions taken by the characters were summarized rather than described while the setting or inanimate objects are overly described.3 There are cliches He smiled like a wolf 4 The word s Suddenly or All of a sudden were used too frequently they shouldn t be us [...]

The main reason I bought read this book was the cover I mean just look at it O.O It just looks good in my small personal library Besides that, the story was a bit average Action packed with a lot of cliffhangers, but still average I couldn t really connect with any of the main characters They all felt so distant It was to be expected from a young author making a debut in the fantasy genre.Did I like reading it Yes.Did I like it enough to continue the other books Nop.

The Written is the debut novel from British author Ben Galley It s a typical fantasy story with the usually expected characters that go with the genre The book is a little rough in places with some silly typos and grammatical mistakes that should be caught with tighter editing However it does get progressively better as Galley grows confident in his writing.Farden is a member of the Written, a group of elite mages with special words of power tattooed on their backs He is charged with the invest [...]

Ben Galley s The Written is graced by a spectacularly striking cover Rather than trying to dummy up a cover himself, as a lot of self published writers do, he went to a crowdsourcing site, Crowdspring, where he was able to offer a precis of his book and have a number of designers submit book cover proposals The one he accepted, by designer Mikael Westman and artist Claudia West, really stands out from the crowd of self published books and would be no surprise coming from any leading publisher Fo [...]

I was already getting that old 2 star feeling when Dark Elves were mentioned, and then on page 13 Haha, and without you, old fools, I would have nothing The smile was instantly gone, replaced by thin lips and a narrowed gaze With a sudden burst of immense speed the mage drew his sword in a silver blur and furiously slammed the blade into Innel s chest I expect this is the single worst book I will read this year No stars, and my Cino help the soul of Ben Galley.

If you are a fan of indie high fantasy and a plethora of adjectives, then this is the book for you I first came across this book at the beginning of the year when Ben Galley ambushed a friend of mine in Waterstones begging her to buy his book She was terrified, but I was amused and yes, intrigued The book seemed to tick all of my boxes and the cover art is really amazing I kind of hate the matte type feeling, but I let that one slide Needless to say, it has taken me a long time to finish it, but [...]

Ben Galley s The Written was my first experience of a self published Fantasy title And it was quite a ride I ve got to open with the most obvious comment, the cover art for this title and indeed the for next in the series is Stunning It completely sold the book to me, which I know is awful on my part My Shallow is showing Not only that, but the quality of the book itself, it s genuinely a thing of beauty I ve been reading this one at work quite a bit, and the number of colleagues who asked me wh [...]

As a fantasy author, I often find the genre slightly difficult to read I ve read so much of by now that a few works seem to merge together and anything that stands out is an instant favourite The Written , Ben Galley s debut novel, is a novel that stood out from the first page.Firstly, Emaneska is a richly imagined and highly original world From the many different races to the exposition of the world itself I struggled to find anything derivative Okay, so elves are one of the older races that ha [...]

I read the first three chapters of this book, and couldn t go further There s some real potential here, it looks like there could be some good world building, and it seems like the book will deal with some interesting themes, like drug use, which is almost never dealt with in fantasy writing But two things bugged me enough to put the book down 1 the writing Word choices were repetitive and uninspired If the main character was referred to as the mage in basic prose one time, I would have had to [...]

I have to agree with other reviewers the book has both strong and weak points Aside from the various grammatical errors throughout the book, at the beginning the story itself was too much like a straight up DD campaign Thankfully, as the story progresses, the author does start to move the story in a original direction The use of tattoos as the source of power was done very well There were a lot of typical fantasy elements thrown in here, but they work well The dream sequences were particularly [...]

I liked this book for very simple reasons it is a thoroughly unpretentious, unashamedly florid punt at a good old fashioned sword and sorcery high fantasy novel Yes, it could have used a copy editor, but as a fellow indie author I was really encouraged by this valiant attempt at a first novel on a self publishing ticket Ben Galley s success in this department has been well documented elsewhere, and he is clearly going from strength to strength as a writer and consultant.As for a round up of the [...]

I have to say I haven t enjoyed a fantasy book as much as this one in absolutely ages This is one hell of a stomping read, I guess you get the idea I loved it, hell, I bloody loved it and would give it six stars if I could I m so thankful that I walked into Waterstones bookshop in West Quay, Southampton and this book stared me in the face and something made me pick it up and I thought I like the look of this book I m so glad I did This is not your usual hum drum usual template fantasy you know w [...]

Excellent A powerful and well written debut Farden is a Written, a Mage who exists to serve the Arka and its surrounding areas After a tragedy and a horrific betrayal, he finds himself becoming weaker and weaker at the hands of a very evil man indeed How will Farden get out of it Finding his strength coming from an unexpected source, Farden battles his daemons, external and internal alike, and finds out just how strong he can truly be This fantasy has everything, epic battles and fights, magic o [...]

I don t feel like spending a long time tearing this book apart, so I ll just say it briefly The writing is just very poor All of a sudden and its like are overused The drama is summarized and told rather than shown The characters are flat and seem to be the author s favorite DD personas, not real people Descriptions are filled with mad lib esque adjectives of a poor, and often repetitive, nature Nothing pops.I ll be honest I picked it up because of the cover art, and it just wasn t worth it.

Tried to read this several times and just could not get into it The writing is confusing It s hard to tell who is saying what when the paragraphs don t change with the speakers It may be the greatest story ever told, but I may never know For now anyway, I m giving up on this one.

I couldn t finish this book I couldn t stand how it would say the Mage did this or the stranger looked even though you knew who the character is This book might get interesting but I don t want to waste my time reading it if it hasn t caught my attention so far.

An excellent book I love the rich, beautiful writing Ben creates true word pictures that I can see The characters are so real and the main character is a wonderful psychological study The book is a real page turner and kept me guessing until the end.

I have hard such great things about this book that I can t believe I ve not gotten around to it yet Ah well, so many books, so little time Got a friend invite from the author and that will definitely move it up on my TBR stack.

I normally don t accept self published novels for review for all the usual reasons given, but the most important one is time With work, the girls, and Wiebe, my reading and blogging time is limited and if I m going to read and review something do I want to risk reading a lot of not so good books to find that one gem or stick with non self published work and run less of a risk that at least the writing is up to scratch I chose to go with the latter even though I realise I might miss out on some r [...]

Something terrible is stirring in the lands of Emaneska An ancient tome with the power to summon a create known only as the Mouths of Darkness has been stolen Can the mages of Arka retrieve the book before its dark power is unleashed First up, I don t often read high fantasy the worlds are usually too dense to easily get into The world in this book was interesting, but I m not sure how much of that was actually intended and how much of it was me projecting onto the scaffolds I ended up playing a [...]

Don t judge a book by its cover It s something I ve been taught and I try to apply that to my book buying as well and judging from the monstrous covers that flourish on my shelves, I seem to do a pretty good job at that However, when it came to the Emaneska Series, I let the cover seduce me into buying I first came across Mr Galley s novels on a blog and the beautiful simplicity of these covers for both The Written and Pale Kings stood out to me The blurb seemed alright, so I just had to have th [...]

I picked this book up because I loved the cover, my interest was piqued by the blurb, and because I read good things about it I really wanted to like it, but at best I came away with mixed feelings Galley has made use of some truly beautiful prose, but it is unfortunately buried in a hailstorm of adjectives and repetition that tangled the flow rather than moving it along He tells an interesting story about an unusual character, but his choice of wording put a distance between me and the characte [...]

I m writing this review without having read the whole book, I m at 18% on a Kobo Glo I see a lot of praise and high ratings for this book but a lot of those mention the potential of the book and even the series And I agree with that But putting that aside and only rating this book, as it stands, so far I cannot give it than two stars.Possible spoilers below The second star is mostly due to my fondness of the mythical and how a lot of that seems to be in this book The problem is, as already ment [...]

The Written is the first book in the Emaneska series All of Emaneska books were self published by their author Ben Galley The Written opens with a mysterious mage murdering some librarians to steal a book for some nefarious purpose From their readers are introduced to Farden a sword wield, fire flinging gauntlet wearing mage known for his temper and the fact that his father s mind buckled under the power of his magics Farden, we quickly learn is tasked by his vampire mentor with tracking down th [...]

There were some repetitions in the phrasing but over all an enjoyable book I liked the twists too Will read the second book in series shortly.

THE WRITTEN by BEN GALLEY EMANESKA SERIES 1 When Ben sent me this book to read and share my review with you the first thing I noticed was THE MOST AMAZING AND EPIC cover ever I absolutely loved it, and if I was about to buy a book merely based on its cover I would definitely buy this one.His name is Farden and he lives in icy cold Emaneska They call him dangerous, but that is only half of the truth Then one day something goes missing from the libraries of Arfell, and five scholar kids are found [...]