Overall rating and opinion of the "End of the Last Great Kingdom" by Victor Rose

Use this forum to discuss the December 2017 Book of the Month, End of the Last Great Kingdom by Victor Rose.
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HouseOfAtticus
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Re: Overall rating and opinion of the "End of the Last Great Kingdom" by Victor Rose

Post by HouseOfAtticus »

I absolutely loved this book. I feel like it did justice to the genre it is a part of. I loved the characterisation in this novel, but I did feel that the plot could have been a bit stronger.
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Post by Lg_99 »

I have yet to read this book. However, I did read a sample of the book, and the story looks promising so far. I liked that the author added the new terminology and their meanings before starting the first chapter. I found this very helpful. The book does not give me a GOT's aura but a Lord of the Ring's instead.
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Post by freakkshowx »

To be quite honest, I found the writing style of Victor Rose to be excruciatingly juvenile, something that he and author Jenna Elizabeth Johnson have in common. However, once I made it past the first 50 pages of the book, I found it far more difficult to put The Brimstone Chronicles down, which was in extreme contrast with Johnson's Faelorehn. Between the two painfully choppy narratives, I noticed that, surprisingly, a gap had begun to form, when I had previously assumed that both would earn the same depressing lack of stars. So, what made Rose's novel so much of a different experience than its terrible counterpart?

For starters, Brimstone's world of magic and monsters was fully developed, complete with separate cultural nuances reserved for each race. In contrast, Johnson stole an existing culture and simplified it to infantile lengths, not only demonstrating laziness in worldbuilding but also offending all practitioners of paganism by demonizing major elements of our pantheon. Secondly, both novels were choked with exposition-style writing that perforated the entire storyline, but Rose did this for lack of understanding as to its proper introduction to the reader, while Johnson committed the same faux-pas, quite obviously, in order to show off her "extensive" (see: not very) research into the religion she hijacked.

Moving on to character development, The Brimstone Chronicles provided readers with a believable array of them, each one possessing multiple personality traits on top of their defining characteristics. Meghan, Johnson's main character, was as dumb as a rock, to state it plainly, to the point that it absolutely destroyed any hope of saving the doomed novel, which leads straight into the differences between "chosen ones" in the works. Brimstone rose to fill the shoes of his taxing savior status through hard physical training, as well as witnessing the mass suffering that plausibly comes with war. Supposedly, the beings of the Otherworld are at war with mortals in Faelorehn, but there is a complete lack of evidence to support that claim. No one suffers, dies, or changes as a result, making the "warring worlds" subplot attempt fall through Johnson's fingers like a half-baked bath bomb.

And, of course, there must be a love interest. Heat, who is interested in Brimstone, has her own separate character arc and is also obviously affected by the suffering she had to cause and witness during their time apart. The two characters rekindle an old flame after their reunion towards the end and learn to adapt to the changes in each other, you know, like in a real relationship. Cade is an entirely different story. As Meghan's love interest...oh wait, he does nothing. The entire time. He just randomly appears after months at a time to remind the reader that a teenage boy is supposed to exist, and that he's super extra mysterious with a heaping helping of mystery-boy hotness. Well, not actually, but if you cringed reading that sentence, then congratulations, you've had the entire Faelorehn experience.

In conclusion, these were only some glaring differences that gnawed at the back of my mind as I was reading December's book of the month, and there are a great deal more that I didn't address for brevity's sake. In all honesty, The Brimstone Chronicles is far from a four-star novel, but I honestly believe that it would have turned into a highly successful tale if the writing style didn't kill all elements of tone, mood, and setting, because its plot and realism with regards to war, murder, and the ways people change when confronted with a changing world would have made it a real winner. My advice to Victor Rose would be to go back and rewrite with some serious suspense coaching, because I truly believe he has the imagination to make the original storyline work for a host of readers. I doubt he'll ever see this, but if he decides to take Brimstone for another spin, I'd be up for End of the Last Great Kingdom 2.0. :tiphat:
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Post by Alice Heritage »

It worked well for the most part but was a bit of a mixture overall. Sometimes it dragged and other times I got really into it. My favourite parts were the revelation about Heat being a fire demon and the powers of the charm bracelet. I thought the ordering of events was a bit odd. He could have acquired the charm bracelet at one time and then used it later, rather than the story about the charm bracelet suddenly being recounted out of order. I found the ordering confusing at times. My rating was 3 out of 4 stars.
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Post by Lebs »

Certain parts were good and well thought out, the author created a whole other world convincingly and beautifully!
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Post by HouseOfAtticus »

I absolutely loved this book. I'm in love with this genre. This book, I felt, had a lot of social significance. I feel that this book reminded me of Harry Potter.
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Post by Christina Rose »

HouseOfAtticus wrote: 04 Jan 2018, 08:11 I absolutely loved this book. I'm in love with this genre. This book, I felt, had a lot of social significance. I feel that this book reminded me of Harry Potter.
Although I wasn’t personally reminded of Harry Potter, outside of the ages and the characters mastering their abilities, I also loved this book. The genre itself is one of my favorites, and this book is very true to its genre.
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Post by Katerina Katapodi »

This book seems to be original and unusual, having its own particularity. By combining, reality and somehow , fiction, -since it involves mages, disguise along with real heroes, the author wants to show, how strange and unpredictable life can be many times, and for many people, and the capacity oneshould have to confront life this way. There are sometimes unavoidable obstacles, in our life, that test our ability to survive, and struggle to make our life the way we want. That the feeling of survival is strong in everybody, who looks for solutions, but always in the frame of incidents that occur to him/her. Thus one is forced many times to give priorities, that one may not like. Things we cannot imagine may happen and we have this way to adjust to circumstances. There's a sense of determinism, ruling our life, but in the vast frame of indeterminism. Let's note that in Philosophy neither determinism (the old theory) nor indeterminism, also a strong theory supported by some philosophers, is said to prevail. Actually we always have to face our fate, no matter how hard is. However this does not imply that we won't or not achieve and win in the end, this depends on many factors. The ability of adjustment is strong, like life of Leaf here, that has to be transformed to mage in order to win. The Order as it's set by author, is successful, expressing the rules of nature and History, But also Order can be said to correspond to Will of God, that has created universe, where ''good'' finally beats evil. This is not absolute of course, and there's eternal struggle in life as long as we live, having to face the unpredictable, But this does not mean that the strongest and most powerful one will definitely prevail, as ability to adapt and braveness to confront, and finally Order can win in the end, as the secret power that rules Universe and restores balance in life, even if we participate in unequal struggles. The author uses some fiction (mage etc0, but he gives equally in his book a paradigm of reality, on how hard life turns finally to be surmounted, and not definitely be unsurmountable, no matter how hard and difficult problems are.. Finally message is : Will can win, more than strength itself against weakness..
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Post by tonysgirl0805 »

I have not read this book and to be honest I am 33 years old and just now watching the Harry Potter movies for the first time and have yet to see Lord of the rings. So far I am loving Harry Potter so I would give this book a try you never know what you like in till you try it right?
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Post by Christina Rose »

tonysgirl0805 wrote: 07 Jan 2018, 23:21 I have not read this book and to be honest I am 33 years old and just now watching the Harry Potter movies for the first time and have yet to see Lord of the rings. So far I am loving Harry Potter so I would give this book a try you never know what you like in till you try it right?
If you read it, I hope you enjoy it. I’m 37, and I think I finally read all of the Harry Potter books maybe two or three years ago. So, I see where you are coming from. 🙃
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Post by Al Chakauya »

I haven't read the novel yet, but I have since read the sample available on Amazon.com and as such as a fan of Game of Thrones I anticipate and hope the book is a good read. From what I got from the sample, the writing style seems solid and intriguing. The author's character building is great- at least for the part I've read from the sample.For me, the story-line seems good and I hope the book will live to my expectations.
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Post by HeatherTasker »

Christina Rose wrote: 01 Dec 2017, 15:46 I really enjoyed this book. As a fan of fantasy novels, I found it very true to form. I loved the world building, unique and well developed characters, and epic battle scenes. I would definitely recommend reading this book to fans of dark fantasy and magic. Readers should use caution, though, as there are quite a bit of descriptive violent scenes. I gave this book 3 out of 4 stars due to scattered errors throughout the novel, but I think the story itself deserves a 4 star rating.
Out of curiosity, do you know who published this? It love that writers can self publish and use smaller presses but I think editing is taking a big hit in the industry as a consequence.
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Post by HeatherTasker »

Christina Rose wrote: 01 Dec 2017, 15:46 I really enjoyed this book. As a fan of fantasy novels, I found it very true to form. I loved the world building, unique and well developed characters, and epic battle scenes. I would definitely recommend reading this book to fans of dark fantasy and magic. Readers should use caution, though, as there are quite a bit of descriptive violent scenes. I gave this book 3 out of 4 stars due to scattered errors throughout the novel, but I think the story itself deserves a 4 star rating.
Out of curiosity, do you know who published this? It love that writers can self publish and use smaller presses but I think editing is taking a big hit in the industry as a consequence.
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Post by Peterhchurch »

Good book, well-developed characters and storyline. Alot of violence but is not a children's book so be careful. Plenty of fantasy and lots of Gore how can you go wrong?
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Post by Mouricia Allen »

I give this book 4 out of 4 stars! It was amazing! The characters were well developed and the storyline flowed nicely. I finished this book in less than a day as I could not put it down!
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