Shadow of the Conqueror

Chronicles of Everfall, Book 1

By: Shad Brooks

Narrated by: Michael Kramer, Kate Reading

Who better to fight back the darkness of the world than the one responsible for most of it?

Daylen, once known as the Great Bastard, the Scourge of Nations, Dayless the Conqueror, has lived in hiding since his presumed death. Burdened by age and tremendous guilt, he thinks his life is coming to an end. Unbeknownst to him he’s about to embark on a journey towards redemption where his ruthless abilities might save the world. Many battles await with friends to be made and a past filled with countless crimes to confront, all the while trying to keep his true identity a secret.

Indeed, it might be too much if not for the fabled power awaiting him.

Everfall is a world of perpetual day where the continents float in an endless sky. If one jumps from the continent they will fall for many hours before returning to the same place from which they fell. Skyships rule the air powered by shining sunstone and industrial darkstone. A legendary order of knights bears mystical powers which they use to hunt out the dreaded shade, monsters that regular people turn into if trapped in darkness for the length of a fall.

It is a world of enchanted swords, merciless monsters, mystical knights, and hard magic, filled with tales of wonder and adventure.

©2019 Shad Brooks (P)2019 Shad Brooks

I NEED MORE!

the feels the friendships, and the world omg the light concept love it all and I want more

Plowed through this in about a day!

I am legally blind, and so I customarily read even books for leisure at 1.25x speed unless the narrator(s) read very quickly. In this case as in most, they don't. This reduces the reading time to about 13.5 hours or so. So when I say I managed to finish the book in 28 hours, that should say something about the book: I enjoyed it.

The book is a little exposition-heavy, in part because Shad is trying to communicate the workings of an alien world, in part because he's a colossal nerd followers of his YouTube channel have come to know and love. I'll say an editor might have helped polish it up a little, but I still found it quite readable and enjoyable. This isn't Eragon here; no need to suffer through clumsy writing and constantly excusing the author's inexperience.

I saw a lot of complaints about the amount of sex in the book in other reviews. By American sensibilities, there's a lot of discussion of it. Sexual depravity was a big part of what made Dayless the Conqueror not just a bad man and a tyrant, but the most evil bastard in the world. This profoundly affects another character in the book, and as it is one of the greatest and most prevalent evils in our own world, it's easy to imagine that it would be likewise in another.

Pirates really are as disgusting as we've seen in this book. As a substantial part of the book deals with them, it's going to be every bit as awful as you think. This is not a book to listen to around the kids unless "the kids" are very mature adolescents who know far too much about the kind of darkness that lives within the hearts of men. Murder, rape, deceit, blackmail, slavery, mass murder, abuse, arrogance, pain, rage, insanity, prejudice, and more. They're all in there somewhere.

But so is kindness, hospitality, love, and joy. Not in equal measure—it's a story about a man who was literally worse than Hitler who "meant well" and went so terribly wrong from there. But it's also a story about that man's attempt to redeem himself.

"A monster like that cannot be redeemed," you say. And y'know what? He's the first person to agree with you. He escaped his death, plotted his revenge, realized that he could not have it right away, and then realized to his astonishment the world was better off with him "dead". In a remote village, he began to face some part of what he'd done and he hated himself as much as everyone else would. He made himself live, in part perhaps because he did not want to die, but in large part because he _did_ want to die.

When his aged body was clearly too weak to sustain him, he set out to commit the most permanent suicide he thought to be possible. And he did not die. He took this as punishment from the Light that he had not suffered enough. And so he determined to accept this punishment if he could.

Only, he was not just not dead, but Cursed With Awesome™. The youth of a man younger than he'd been when he became Dayless the Conqueror, but with all the wisdom of a lifetime of mistakes and regrets, mastery of skills that take a lifetime, and _power_.

Will history repeat itself or will Daylen this time humbly remain simply Daylen? Spoiler alert: Humble ain't his style, and he firmly believes he's got a lot to make up for if he can overcome a lifetime of evil thoughts, habits, and emotion.

A very solid debut novel

The characters and themes are all explored well. Sometimes Shad has a tendency to lean on exposition, but it barely affects the quality. A good read.

clown colored hair with raw human emotion

Shad's book was much better expected. I'm so glad he was put on my radar.

This book doesn't hold back.

I have never felt so conflicted about an character till listening to this book, very well done.