Second paragraph of third chapter of Moroda:
He sat on one of the large wooden trunks holding broken weapons, and gazed mournfully at the swords and crossbows adorning the walls of the armoury he had been relegated to keeping an eye on. Head in his hands, Morgen sighed – was this really what it was all about, in the Imperial army? Following order you didn’t agree with and being punished for every mistake? Not to mention constant jokes and jibes from colleagues and superiors both? Morgen had envisioned that a glittering career as a famous knight awaited him in Niversai; it was why he left his hometown, and he had no intention of returning to his small farm and working the land along with his brothers. He had left to prove his worth, and he’d be damned if he returned a failure.
Second paragraph of third chapter of its sequel, Palom (which I didn’t read):
The red and gold armour of the Imperial Guard glinted in the bright winter sun, carving a line of colour through the city’s white and grey buildings. While Palom marched with the soldier, he did not share their livery.
Look, I’m going to admit to a moment of weakness here, OK? I was at a convention, and this author accosted me from her stall, and persuaded me to buy the first two books in her series of fantasy novels. And she autographed them both with heartwarming personalised messages. She was good at selling her product, and she got my money, and I got two nice-looking books.
And I came home and they sat on the shelf for almost six years.
And that’s on me, not on the author. I should have looked inside to see if these books were the sort of thing that I actually like. And they aren’t. It’s a fantasy world which has both dragons and steampunk airships, and the writing is about average, and the typesetting is a bit skew-whiff, and I looked at the combined 800 pages of the two volumes, and I gave up before page 50 of the first one.
You may like them more than I did. You can get the first volume here and the second here.
Moroda passes the Bechdel test in the first chapter, when the protagonist’s sister helps her escape from a dungeon cell. I did not check Palom.
These were the SF books that had lingered longest on my unread shelves. Next on that pile is Orlanda, by Jacqueline Harpman.
