The Burial

by Drew Montgomery

A call to arms against a heathen threat in a hallowed place. A promise made that cannot be broken. An epic journey through unfamiliar kingdoms to lands ravaged by war.Even those hundreds of miles away cannot escape the call for soldiers to fight for the holy cause in a hallowed land. Those summons reach the small farm of Gwil and Eira, and a husband and father marches away, joining others from his town and across the kingdoms in the fight.For two years, Eira keeps the farm going, working with her children to tend the crops, all while awaiting news about her husband. When news finally comes, it is in the form of a half-dead townsman, ridden much of the way from the front only to deliver news of an ambush, the men of the town slaughtered, left unburied, their rites unspoken, their souls forever lost in the place between worlds.While the rest mourn, Eira can only think of the promise she made before Gwil left, the promise to see him properly buried. Leaving the farm in the hands of her children, she ventures from her home for the first time in her life to fulfill that promise. With the help of a drunken priest, an adventurous bard, and dreams of her husband that may or may not be real, she travels across lands she’d never known and into a place where a terrible war still rages on, where she only hopes she can make it alive to see her husband given his rites.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy

319 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 13, 2020

About the author

Drew Montgomery is an author and graduate of Texas A&M. He currently lives in Houston, TX, where he moonlights as a game developer. When not writing, you can often find him reading, playing video games, drinking craft beer, and occasionally watching and complaining about the local sports teams.

You can follow him on Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook for more writings, random musings, and the occasional humorous image.

Reviews

[Tori Tecken · Rating 4 out of 5]

See my full review on the Before We Go Blog website here:
https://beforewegoblog.com/review-the...

3.5 stars

The Burial brings us a poignant tale of a woman willing to face her own death to honor her husband. Montgomery pulls back the curtain to honor the heroes who never see the frontline of a battle, those who are left behind. Eira is a protagonist who takes hold of her own agency with an iron grip and refuses to be deterred by any hurdle placed in her path on her way to finding the one she loves.

The story is almost dreamlike in its execution. Even outside of Eira’s own dreams, the reader’s journey has an ethereal quality, as if we are moving trancelike through the prose alongside the characters. Stepping away from the more commonly told story of the brave warrior, The Burial exchanges furious action scenes for the intimate view of grief and the undying bond of true love.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was on the fence with giving this book 5 stars, but I had trouble staying engaged in first half. I probably made a mistake coming to this book directly after Mistborn (not to say Mistborn is good and this book isn't) due to differences in pacing. It took me about 2 weeks to get to the halfway point but I breezed through the rest.

If you're looking for lots of magic, action, and worldbuilding, this is the wrong place. This book focuses on Eira and her journey, and it's very hard not to grow attached to her along the way.

I enjoyed the writing style and the dialogue (which there is a lot of) feels very natural. I'm glad a took a break from big-name fantasy to give this book a try.

[Belinda Richee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Book!

A wonderful story! Great characters, even the bad ones, not much graphic sex or violence to speak of, but well worth reading anyway!