“Freeborn” by Steven Calkum
This is a fun story. It is older YA fantasy (violence and blood) with a romantic sub-plot tastefully handled. It has sympathetic main characters, a rich cultural and historical setting, realistic conflicts at several different levels, and plenty of action and suspense. It contains the necessary serious themes we expect from the genre. It has all the elements of a top-notch story.
Unfortunately, the flaws in the writing detract from the reader’s enjoyment. The first hundred pages is concerned with the early growth and education of Freeborn, the main character. This section is set up like the traditional Hero’s Journey, but it is missing the required serious objective that would provide conflict and suspense. It becomes more a Hero’s Wandering for ten years, involving a repetitive pattern of physical conflict (nicely described) and cities that are all built on the ruins of former greatness (beautifully described at great length), In one chapter, the two heroes take a ship to a city, stay there while nothing happens, then take another ship to another city. As far as I can figure, removing that chapter would take absolutely nothing from the story.
In general, there is far too much description of settings and minor action, which often intrudes into conflict, both physical and verbal, and slows down the read. And if you want points for creativity, avoid overused expressions like “groaning banquet tables.”
There is also too much intrusion of the author into the story. Too much explanation. The opening ten years is mostly narration with very little dialogue, and this tendency continues even after the real action starts. There is too much telling, and not enough showing through character actions and dialogue.
A more subtle problem which distracts the reader from the story is constant switching of point of view. At several places, in the middle of a battle scene, the author jumps in to explain how an enemy feels. This demonstrates a lack of awareness of how important POV is in cementing our relationship with a limited number of characters.
And in general, the large number proof-reading errors provides another distraction. The first hint to a lack of editing: “lay” and “laid” get mixed. Missing quotation marks, punctuation errors, and repeated words show up regularly.
And then, when the suspense builds to an exciting climax with a satisfying conclusion, the story fades to a rather weak ending.
Three stars
This review was originally posted on Reedsy Discovery.
