The Withered King (Tempest Blades Book 1) by Ricardo Victoria

There’s a some portals and a spaceship, a lizard pilot dude and a good deal of magick, a 133 yr old father-mentor guy and lottsa swords. A total mashup spanning the spacepunk, fantasy, scifi, and LitRPG genres, The Withered King looks to surprise you on every page.

Fionn had lost his friends in the Great War… and a hundred years later, he is still grieving. Brought in to help with the investigation into a professor’s death, he has a new mission. One that will give him a role as mentor and maybe savior of the whole world.

I suspect that Victoria has always had an active imagination. Thinking up tales and stories and spinning them for hours on end. This book has all the facets of a good tale: a world that is both strange, yet familiar in many ways, characters you can root for, and supernatural elements that keep you on your toes.

The key to this book for me are the plot points that expand so well from the great battle in the opening pages… each chapter takes you one step closer to solving the greater mysteries Victoria has spun in his debut novel. My only criticism is that at times the mashup may be a little too much as explanation or info dumps did get in the way of the plot progression.

Overall, The Withered King is an impressive debut that any reader of speculative fiction should enjoy.

4 out of 5 stars.

Read an Excerpt over on Don Jimmy’s Reviews!

Thank you to the author for an advanced copy for review.