BOOK POST | SERIES REVIEW | THE EMANESKA SERIES | BEN GALLEY

 BOOK POST | SERIES REVIEW | THE EMANESKA SERIES | BEN GALLEY

ABOUT THE SERIES

This norse-inspired epic fantasy series is packed with magic, dragons, mystery, and battles across a vast world and timeline. The Emaneska Series is a saga not to be missed, a hard-hitting dose of emotional, exciting fantasy that is perfect for fans of Joe Abercrombie, Steven Erikson, John Gwynne, and George R.R. Martin.

1.   The Written

An epic Norse fantasy packed with tattooed mages wielding unbridled spells, meddling gods, dragon-riders, and twisted mythology.

 Only half the recruits that undergo the Ritual survive to become Written mages. Only they can wield the fiercest of magics to protect the Arka, until either death or the madness takes them.

 When five scholars of Arfell are assassinated and a powerful spellbook from the time of elves and daemons is stolen, it falls to Farden, the Arka's most powerful yet troubled Written mage, to keep Emaneska from falling into chaos.

 Entangled in a web of lies and politics, Farden is tasked with hunting down the assassin and recovering the spellbook before it falls into the wrong hands and the world is cast into shadow. The Arka are running out of time to find the culprit, and Emaneska seems once again on the brink of war with the Siren dragon-riders.

 Farden will have to fight his way across savage Emaneska and back, a land infested with wyrms, marauders, and betrayal. It will take every fibre of his will, every scrap of magic in his bones, and if Farden falls, so shall the world.

2.   Pale Kings

Could you take a child's life to save a world?

 The Pale Kings are rising. Emaneska's Long Winter remains as bitter as a blade between the ribs. War is fast approaching. Gods and demons are hovering on the horizon. Long-lost revelations arrive to haunt the lives of three men.

 While Farden the Written mage busies himself digging up his past in the strange deserts of Paraia, the storm-clouds begin to gather for Durnus, Elessi, Cheska, and Modren.

 Together with Farfallen and his dragon-riders, they must fight to survive against the Long Winter, the vicious machinations of the new Arkmage, and the arrival of something much deadlier than both combined.

 War, deception, and murder are quickly becoming the only paths to salvation.

 

3.   Dead Stars - Part One

The sky is falling. The world trembles beneath it. Emaneska is crying out for a saviour.

 Somebody is hunting down the Written mages in the wilds. Murdering and skinning them alive. Who? A mere girl. A girl who was born to rip the stars from the sky and bring them crashing down to earth. The direst enemy Emaneska has ever faced.

 In the wake of the Battle of Krauslung, the world has changed. For the darker. For the stranger. Magic swells like a storm, spilling from the stunned lips of farmboys and milkmaids, burning spell books to cinders at the lightest of touches.

 As Krauslung unknowingly balances on a knife-edge, tension mounts. Insidious whispers have begun to spread, drawing new enemies to the surface. Discontent, fear, betrayal. It seems that the girl is not the only enemy Emaneska faces.

 Who can stand in their way? Will it be a pair of struggling Arkmages, one blind, one Written? An Albion maid, on the cusp of her wedding day? Three shadows of gods? Or will it be a ghost, a bloody rumour, lost in a dark world of murder and bitter memories?

 One question above all lingers on their lips: where in Emaneska is Farden?

4.   Dead Stars - Part Two

North, is where the battle will take place. North, is where Farden must go. But to death, to glory, or to both?

 The Arka have chosen their champion, and now he must lead them to the top of the world – The Spine, where the black mountains belch fire, and where the battle against apocalypse will take place upon the Ice Fields

 As Farden and the others travel north in a warship clad in iron, the Krauslung they leave behind is crumbling. Not under the onslaught of the girl and her daemons, but from within: under the force of greed and poisonous ambition. It seems there are too many battles to fight.

 Now, with the Sirens silent, the frozen north in uproar, and the responsibility mounting, Emaneska's champion must face a choice. Can he tread the tunnels of Hel to save the world? To save a woman more ghost than alive? To claim the armour he has always longed for? For salvation lies in the hands of a Knight fifteen-hundred years dead, and in the red-gold armour of a certain mage.

 Salvation lies with Scalussen. 

REVIEW

Having read the first two books of the second trilogy in this series, I thought that it was about time that I got round to reading (well, listening really) to the first series in Ben Galley’s The Emaneska series.

The story revolves around Farden, a mage known as a Written. This is due to the fact that magic revolves around magic users having a magic book tattooed into their skin.

In the first book, when we meet Farden we have loads of political intrigue as a group of mages are brutally murdered. Farden is sent to investigate the situation. This leads to him discovering a plan that will put the whole system in jeopardy. 

In the second book, the story moves onto further jeopardy as prophecy comes into place. With the birth of a child. The world is plunged into danger. 

When we get to the final part of the story, this story is split into two parts. It picks up the story about ten years after the events of Pale Kings. Farden has disappeared and the upheavals of the second book. When we get back to him, we find that he is now eking out a living a hired sell sword who is now working for the lords of Albion. In addition to this, he has now succumbed to his addictions and is living as a shadow of himself. 

The final part of the story deals with the inevitable culmination of the story. 

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Ben Galley’s works and for me is one of those writers that reminds me of the reasons of why I got into fantasy in the first place. He writes classic fantasy that has a modern interpretation of the genre and has that gritty edge reminiscent of Peter McLean, Rob Hayes, John Gwynne etc.

It’s always a little bit weird going back to a writer’s first works, especially when you have read later works and are used to how they have developed now. However, on the other side of the coin, it is always interesting to see how earlier works compare to these later works.

In the case of the Emaneska series, it is great to see that whilst they show development, they also hold up well as the story is well over a decade old now (fifteen years in fact. Well, possible a little bit more at the time of writing as the original book was released in early December 2010).

Ultimately, I really enjoyed my time reading The Emmaneska series and was completely immersed in the world that Galley has imagined, moving from one part of the story to the next until i had consumed it all.