Customer Reviews

Once Walked With Gods (Elves Trilogy 1)

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Not an easy one to get into this, but once you settle into it, it moves like lightening.

The author does not help the reader by failing to position this with his readers who may, or may not have read his excellent Raven series. So I'll try, and I am sure if I get anything wrong someone will jump in and correct me.

Takkar is a hero of the Elves and the fearless leader of the TaiGethan (think ninja warrior Elves) and as he and his warriors are defending a portal from their world to the world of Balaia his courage fails and he breaks, leaving thousands of Elves to their fate.

In Balaia Takkar goes into shameful exile and the Elves build up their society, sharing a world with humans that they keep well away from in the forest. Shunt forward about a thousand years and the caste system (known as threads) is breaking down and treacherous Elves bring humans in to help defend their Thread as the superior one. Violent civil was breaks out and the Elven race is now at the brink of extinction, maybe the long exiled Takkar can help, but the immortal Elf is dealing with his shame in exile....

That's kind of where the book starts and I was confused at first putting the situation and the timelines into context. At this point in their history the Elves have no magic so when they encounter human mages with powerful spells, the fighting skills of the TaiGethan may not be enough.

The majority of this book is about the battle for the Elf city of Calaius, taken over by humans and defended by sword and magic as the Elves struggle to fight back amongst their own mistrust and treachery.

I almost went three stars with this, the Elven race fell apart too quickly, the contextual confusion, but Barclay has considerable skill in his dialogue and his action and you soon forget early concerns as you are swept into the pulsating story you would expect from James Barclay. I certainly ended it hungry for more and seeking the next instalment.

There is no need to have read anything else by James Barclay to read this, and in a strange way you might enjoy it more if you haven't as the timelines will not confuse you.

This is the start to a new fantasy series set in a world the author knows well. He has written other books that take place 3000 year after this one and now he has gone back to look at the history of the elves. Or what I felt it to be, the massacre and destruction of them.

The elves have one big enemy, themselves. They are made up from different threads, let's just say races, and those will now start to fight between themselves and they especially go after the leaders. Their world is breaking apart. Oh those stupid elves, the whole point behind all of this is for some to get power and they use humans to do it. But we all know you can't trust humans. The elves should have known better. The whole book turns into one horrific slaughter. It is the the big bad Empire/Colonists/you name it who turns on the natives for their resources and slave labour and the elves have nothing to put up against the magic the humans wield. Just as other "explorers" had firepower.

But do not think all is lost. No the elves have one group of fighters who can take on anyone, they are just so few. And then there is Takar who is crazy and lives alone in the forest and 90% of the elves hate him after he left the elves on their home world to die. But he had to save the new world. I understand.

The thing that bothered me was that I had a hard time getting into this book. It felt confusing since everything happened so fast, it is truly action fantasy. Also the names, I had no idea who was a boy or a girl and it took quite some time to get it all in. Maybe in the end there was too much happening for me. I usually say I am not that into character driven novels but here I would have wanted more.

But even with those troubles I still got really fascinated because I want to know what will happen to this poor elven nation. I just want to go there and kick out those humans. I also wondered what happens in those later books since that would leave me clues of the state of the elves in this world.

Conclusion:
It left me with a funny feeling. The book was not for me but still I crave more. The author was just that good. I really do want to know what happens next. He has a good voice and imagination, I will give him that.