Eleventh Cycle (Mistland Book 1)

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Each character is very distinctive with their own burdens to carry, and all seemingly running from something in their lives. You will cheer them in battle, will them on in their darkest moments, perhaps even identify with one or two as I myself found. As I progressed through Eleventh Cycle, each of the four protagonists took turns being my favorite character. I could see the outline of a slumbering forest, its silhouette looking much like the curled body of a dreaming giant. Despite the page length and high stakes of the book, Ardalan keeps the actual story relatively small.

Reddit Books with Dark Souls vibe : r/Fantasy - Reddit

By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. Kian spends the time dedicated to these characters, and exploring their trauma and how they carry it with them throughout their lives.It is almost like some kind of emotional power-leveling as every character gets knocked down and yet finds another way to pull themselves up, all the stronger for it. The misty world feels claustrophobic at times which is just a sign of how good the author is at drawing you into the setting.

Eleventh Cycle, by Kian N. Ardalan : r/Fantasy - Reddit [Review] Eleventh Cycle, by Kian N. Ardalan : r/Fantasy - Reddit

The readers worked hard and you can feel it, but not all effort gets you where you want to be sometimes. This isn’t a Wheel of Time or Song of Ice and Fire situation where it takes thousands of pages for POV characters to run into each other. The story itself begins as fragments told from these multiple perspectives, allowing us to build emotional connections to each of the individual characters before their plot lines eventually intersect. While imperfect, this book read differently than any other fantasy book I have picked up, and I recommend to readers looking for their next chonky book.We ask all users help us create a welcoming environment by reporting posts/comments that do not follow the subreddit rules. By making it a matriarchal society, there is a subtle (or perhaps not so subtle) commentary on humanity's own sexism and how our hubris holds us back as a species.

Kian N. Ardalan | Eleventh Cycle

Ievarus has no understanding of the real world nor of human customs, and yet this lack of knowledge comes out in such real and lived in ways that by the end of the novel I liked Ievarus more than any other character. The layers sitting beneath the surface of what is actually on the page are evident as the world has history, depth, and character. So I guess you could say that during the day I like to escape into the past and in the evening I like to escape into other worlds!This book is not for the faint of heart, but readers looking for truly unsettling dark fantasy will find so much to eat up here. I wish to make a particular comment on how cleverly the society of these sentient spiders is built for it mirrors our own world in such a clever way—familiar, but different. Thou art b'rn, Seed of King, Blood of King, to delivereth Minethria from festering Evil like Seeds before thee; all so that land be birth'd from mist and the Eleventh Cycle may finally end. Within the continent we have three forests known as the thickwood, the dreamwood, and the forest of Ash.

Eleventh Cycle by Kian N. Ardalan: Book Review Eleventh Cycle by Kian N. Ardalan: Book Review

While I have passing familiarity with both of those, I have never played/read either of them, and so I don’t have those to color or inform my opinion of the book. Getting to experience these characters has been an honour so far, and an incredibly emotional experience. So far it's been a few tears, which is very hard to get from me in a book, and I have been assured by my friends whom have read it, that it only gets more emotional from here on out!James did not shy away from highlighting the ruthlessness of colonialist rhetoric which made the book quite adept at stoking my anger. Eleventh Cycle achieves Brandon Sanderson-level worldbuilding, but with a murkier tone and a more nuanced execution. Part of this might have been the result of trying to make sure all four of the main POV character’s storylines lined up so that the big confluence of character meet-ups could happen later in the book. When the Evil is defeated, a cycle ends and the mist barrier is pushed back, and a year is extended by one month, so essentially each cycle adds a month to the people's lifespan, time being controlled by an angel in their floating domain.