I’m taking part in the Indie Fantasy Addicts Summer Reading Challenge, and decided it makes great content to feed the SEO Gods. Hooray!
First up was Power of the Sorceress by Krista Walsh who is not only a VERY nice person with an amazing amount of self-publishing knowledge to share, but also one hell of a writer. Her Immortal Sorceress series, to which PotS is a prequel, has re-ignited my love of urban fantasy as a reader, and I could not recommend it more.
This entire series has been an absolute blast so far. After teases of the past history between FMC and MMC, Kat and Emrick, I was more than ready to dive into the past and learn how it all began. Walsh did not disappoint (and I never for an instant thought she would).
To give as brief a recap as possible: when her village of sorcerers is attacked/used as bait to summon a greater power by three of their own, sole survivor Katerina finds herself bound to a servant of Death—Emrick, shepherd of magical souls. Power of the Sorceress follows her journey through grief and rage to re-discovery of herself and a purpose as the long road of immortality stretches out before her.
While Walsh has laid the groundwork for the delicious pining and tension between Kat and Emrick in two previous novels and a novella, getting a front-row seat to their story unfolding over the decades was delightful. Sweeping across England in the 12th Century into Crusades-riddled southern France, Walsh writes with a confidence of history and time without overwhelming the reader with the stickier politics of the era, and she uses this higher-level space to great advantage. Helping in this is how her immortal characters perceive time and the deployment of these conversations as the much older Emrick prepares his accidental companion for the future that awaits her.
It is particularly heartbreaking to know where Kat is at the start of the Immortal Sorceress series and to see how her apathy toward modernity is mirrored by the warnings of the past.
As with each book in the series, I require, nay, demand more Adrian in all things. But fans of the fancy vampire will be pleased with the role he has to play and the advice he gleefully doles out to our thick-headed lovesick leads.
ALSO, Walsh has written one of the creepier villains I’ve come across in a while, and I had to set my e-reader down and take a moment before re-reading his first appearance in this novella because it was done SO WELL.
If you like world-weary main characters, found family, and fast-paced fantasy, this entire series is for you. While a prequel, I would recommend starting with Fire of the Sorceress so the emotional beats in Power of the Sorceress hit, but you could certainly start here as a primer and not be lost in the world.
Grab it, and the rest of the series, direct from Krista at her website: