SFINCS
The flight of the Necromancer is a book where the protagonist is a necromancer, which isn’t something you see very often, and it appears there’s some global political stage, which is unclear to me as it seems there might be a massive time jump. It’s hard to say without further context and to get that context, you won’t find in this book. Now, that doesn’t mean understanding the context mentioned above is required for the enjoyment of this book.
Gotthil, the necromancer in questions finds himself in a dungeon and discovers a godlike entity which he has to destroy to escape the cave. It starts off at a training ground and he’s ridiculed(sounds familiar) because he wants to treat necromancy different than the status quo. For me personally, while I understand the want to be different, but in the time of battle, one must ALWAYS take the side of pragmatism vs individual wants, for the latter often leads to people dying, which could have been avoided. He also finds some extremely racist dwarves in the caves(This is missing grandiose contexts regardless of the prologue which feels shoehorned in).
The Plot was fine, the dialogue is stilted at time but I believe this was targeted towards middle grade, in which case the writing seems fine for that sort of thing. I don’t recal any profanity or any other elements that would be inherently problematic for that age range so I find it appropriate.
The characters that you do get a POV for are fleshed out, and those they talk to, primarily the necromancer, and the two dwarves and that’s really it. It seems to be like it’s written for a D&D campaign and the characters are exactly that and the dialogue is stilted again, just based on who might read it, or his intended audience.
The world building is quite minimalistic. You don’t get the sense of the grandiose bit, but then again, you don’t really need to. So, if you’re wanting to be immersed in high fantasy, you will be disappointed as the world building remains anchored within the magic system and immediate setting.
Originality in my opinion is there in the sense that you’re in the POV for a necromancer which you don’t see often. However, if you'‘ve played D&D this is a common adventure trope, additionally, the character dynamics, like I mentioned above aren’t inherently new and original. It’s a fine read, but don’t expect ground breaking world building and so on.
There is one hyper criticism I have, and yes we have to have this conversation again: are prologues good or bad? In this case, I would chop this up as a badly utilized prologue and it doesn’t feel like one to me. This feels more like a starting chapter of a grand book, rather than a prologue, similar to Eragon’s prologue which was just a chapter rather than a prologue.
If you want to give it a go this October, get it here