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Western Fantasy #2
Pariah's Moon: A Fantasy Western Novel
Book One of The Pariah of Verigo series.
A Reluctant
Giele has spent twenty years fighting wars for the King of Aelfland, but when he makes the mistake of falling in love with the Princess of the Realm, he is stripped of his rank, his citizenship, and his name. His face is marked with the slivered moon, forever identifying him as an outcast. No longer will he find a home among his own people.
He travels halfway across the world to seek a fresh start among the colonists of the continent of Verigo, but the troubles of a marked man seem to follow him wherever he goes. It only takes one mistake, crossing the path of a local gangster, and once more Giele finds himself forced to take on the role of warrior, first to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and then to avenge those he cannot protect.
Pariah's Moon is a harrowing tale of redemption and revenge, bows and bullets, magic and massacre.
A Reluctant
Giele has spent twenty years fighting wars for the King of Aelfland, but when he makes the mistake of falling in love with the Princess of the Realm, he is stripped of his rank, his citizenship, and his name. His face is marked with the slivered moon, forever identifying him as an outcast. No longer will he find a home among his own people.
He travels halfway across the world to seek a fresh start among the colonists of the continent of Verigo, but the troubles of a marked man seem to follow him wherever he goes. It only takes one mistake, crossing the path of a local gangster, and once more Giele finds himself forced to take on the role of warrior, first to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and then to avenge those he cannot protect.
Pariah's Moon is a harrowing tale of redemption and revenge, bows and bullets, magic and massacre.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 23, 2011
13 people want to read
About the author
Ian Thomas Healy
127 books101 followersIan Thomas Healy is a prolific writer who dabbles in many different speculative genres. His superhero novel Deep Six: A Just Cause Novel was a Top 100 Semi-finalist in the 2008 Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award. He’s a seven-time participant and winner of National Novel Writing Month where he’s tackled such diverse subjects as sentient alien farts, competitive forklift racing, a religion-powered rabbit-themed superhero, cyberpunk mercenaries, cowboy elves, and an unlikely combination of vampires with minor league hockey. He is also the creator of the Writing Better Action Through Cinematic Techniques workshop, which helps writers to improve their action scenes.
His goal is to become as integral to the genre of superhero fiction as William Gibson was to cyberpunk and Anne Rice was to urban fantasy.
Ian lives in Colorado with his wife, three children, and a plethora of housepets. When not writing, which is rare, he likes to take road trip, enjoys watching football and hockey, and listening to or playing music. His ebooks can be found on Smashwords, Kindle, Nook, iBook Store, and other online retailers.
His goal is to become as integral to the genre of superhero fiction as William Gibson was to cyberpunk and Anne Rice was to urban fantasy.
Ian lives in Colorado with his wife, three children, and a plethora of housepets. When not writing, which is rare, he likes to take road trip, enjoys watching football and hockey, and listening to or playing music. His ebooks can be found on Smashwords, Kindle, Nook, iBook Store, and other online retailers.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 9, 2011
Pariah's Moon gives you all the best things about epic fantasy (elves, magic, wizards bows and arrows) and deftly weaves them with classic western themes (an exiled lone hero seeks redemption among an indigenous people in a faraway land). Fill it all in with Healy's excellent pacing and his gift for action-based writing, and you'll a tight, thrilling tale with a lot of heart.
July 29, 2015
Originally posted at Butterfly-o-Meter Books on Feb 20 2012:
Before we go any further into this, let me tell you 2 things that I find relevant:
1 – The fact that this review showed up now had nothing to do with this article, it’s sort of coincidental that I finally got to this title right about the time the article was posted. Funny how the Universe works, huh? (Also, as a personal note, I agree with him on the whole, though I’m not sure what the “be more considered” part refers to?)
2 – I’ve been in an adventure-reading phunk, I’ve noticed lately. This is the sequel of my YA-reading phunk that went on November-December 2011. It’s one of those moods, you know, when you just don’t feel it as much as you did or might at any other time. I’m sure it happens to all of us readers, especially the ones reading more genres. It’s like ice-cream, you know? I love ice-cream by large, but there are time I wouldn’t consider anything but lemon-flavored ice-cream, and times when chocolate-flavored is a must.
Moving on.
The plot of this novel starts out pretty medieval, we’re talking king (no, I will not capitalize it, the king didn’t work hard enough to earn it, lol), princess, marriage for alliances, pretty basic castle setup. Except it’s for elves, and the princess turns out to be her father’s daughter in more then one way. Poor Giele gets used and abused, and then ventures on to new and brave explorations.
The world-building was interesting, but I can’t say I felt I was 100% there. A lot of it has to do with my adventure-phunk, I’m more likely to be on board some thriller/romance ride, something more intense and less high-fantasy tale-like, you know? But Pariah’s Moon was very tale-like, and I’m not using the fairytale term for it because it’s not your typical fairytale setting. It’s something like a Wild High-Fantasy world, the concept was very interesting.
Giele was a rather stoic, admirable character, but I didn’t connect with him emotionally. Not even when the princess pulled her stunt on him, an I generally connect with characters in that sort of situation. The rest of the ‘cast’ of characters was interesting, the Horkish were my favorite part of it all I think, Ullu being the most fun. The Giele / Ullu part was pretty awesome, I loved their chemistry (and Ullu’s lines were great).
The writing style leans more on the old-school vibe, descriptive, omniscient and leveled authorial voice. Though there were tense moments, the intensity of them didn’t reach me much for some reason.
Overall, I felt this was a good story, with good characters and an interesting tale, but I didn’t have a lot of chemistry with it. If you like high-fantasy worlds and the journey/adventure type of scenario, you might want to try this out.
Before we go any further into this, let me tell you 2 things that I find relevant:
1 – The fact that this review showed up now had nothing to do with this article, it’s sort of coincidental that I finally got to this title right about the time the article was posted. Funny how the Universe works, huh? (Also, as a personal note, I agree with him on the whole, though I’m not sure what the “be more considered” part refers to?)
2 – I’ve been in an adventure-reading phunk, I’ve noticed lately. This is the sequel of my YA-reading phunk that went on November-December 2011. It’s one of those moods, you know, when you just don’t feel it as much as you did or might at any other time. I’m sure it happens to all of us readers, especially the ones reading more genres. It’s like ice-cream, you know? I love ice-cream by large, but there are time I wouldn’t consider anything but lemon-flavored ice-cream, and times when chocolate-flavored is a must.
Moving on.
The plot of this novel starts out pretty medieval, we’re talking king (no, I will not capitalize it, the king didn’t work hard enough to earn it, lol), princess, marriage for alliances, pretty basic castle setup. Except it’s for elves, and the princess turns out to be her father’s daughter in more then one way. Poor Giele gets used and abused, and then ventures on to new and brave explorations.
The world-building was interesting, but I can’t say I felt I was 100% there. A lot of it has to do with my adventure-phunk, I’m more likely to be on board some thriller/romance ride, something more intense and less high-fantasy tale-like, you know? But Pariah’s Moon was very tale-like, and I’m not using the fairytale term for it because it’s not your typical fairytale setting. It’s something like a Wild High-Fantasy world, the concept was very interesting.
Giele was a rather stoic, admirable character, but I didn’t connect with him emotionally. Not even when the princess pulled her stunt on him, an I generally connect with characters in that sort of situation. The rest of the ‘cast’ of characters was interesting, the Horkish were my favorite part of it all I think, Ullu being the most fun. The Giele / Ullu part was pretty awesome, I loved their chemistry (and Ullu’s lines were great).
The writing style leans more on the old-school vibe, descriptive, omniscient and leveled authorial voice. Though there were tense moments, the intensity of them didn’t reach me much for some reason.
Overall, I felt this was a good story, with good characters and an interesting tale, but I didn’t have a lot of chemistry with it. If you like high-fantasy worlds and the journey/adventure type of scenario, you might want to try this out.
April 27, 2011
The fun thing about this book was the way you got to go directly from a high-fantasy world into the Old West, but fantasy style. The high-fantasy world is full of all the melodrama of medieval politics (especially sexual politics), and the shift from that to the Old West-world of, well, rape, murder, and swindling the folks Back Home is like jumping into a cold pool on a hot day. Yeah, those elves are lying, cheating SOBs, but at least they're relatively honest.
A clever variation for the Weird West subgenre (which I love). Good characters, fast action, and lots of bloody revenge.
A clever variation for the Weird West subgenre (which I love). Good characters, fast action, and lots of bloody revenge.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews