The world building was great but there was an awful lot going on for the length of this story. Too many characters and I can get easily confused, especially in fantasy novels where you also need to learn about the world you are in. If there could have been just a bit less going on in Book 1, I think I would have enjoyed it more.

Found it a bit hard to keep the characters straight because I wasn’t as invested in them as I wanted to be. Maybe because I didn’t find they were quite connected with each other properly. The book is very obviously the start to a series and I have hope it’ll continue to get better. I did really enjoy the story, it just took a bit to get through.

White Star Phase is an enjoyable book with several conflicting personalities being drawn together to create both a tense and humorous plot. However, the book is slow-paced and it’s obvious early on that it’s the first in a series: none of the plotlines come to any fruition, they are simply drawing characters together and starting to manoeuvre them for the following books. Unfortunately, it meant it was disappointing.

The multiple threads might have worked if there was a sense of them converging. Other than everyone being thrust into an uncomfortable situation and all of the characters being forced to undertake a journey with great consequences, nothing binds them together. You don’t see how their paths are going to intersect, or why they would need to. They remain individual stories throughout. This left me wondering if anything is going to happen in the second book to bring them together, or whether it would be more of the same.

Potentially because of this isolation, I don’t feel the book came to any sort of conclusion. One character walks away from a situation, and suddenly the book has ended. It left me feeling the author ran out of words and had to leave it there: there was no peak, no crux or turning point and no resolution to a problem; characters got to where they needed to be and that’s it.

It was a real shame that the plot was stunted because I really enjoyed the characterisations and the writing was strong. Valkin was definitely my favourite: a manipulative commander, he doesn’t care for authority but knows how to grovel and charm if it gets him what he wants. His dialogue made me laugh.

Erona flees her village after it has been attacked. I liked her; she’s brave and strong, but her reactions are both plausible and realistic. She reacts well to her new surroundings, even coping with Valkin and his brother.

Krudah – a commander who murdered his wife under mysterious circumstances – has the deepest plot: there’s a sinister note to his travels and has higher levels of violence. It also has the strongest bond between the characters.

Aris is an assassin dealing with a demon. He’s a strong character but I feel there is more of him to come.

There are a lot of different characters and storylines. It mainly focuses on three or four, but occasionally new ones are introduced. While each were good in their own right, it meant there was no consistency and no chance to connect with the characters and their plight. It also made it tricky to get to know the world as everyone inhabits and deals with different elements.

It felt this book was written because a series needed a starting point, not because it had a story that could stand by itself or be developed. While, as mentioned, the writing quality was adequate, it made it hard to engage.

The series has potential due to the writing style, but it failed to hold my attention.

In this book we follow multiple storylines of different people and it is an epic fantasy story. What I liked most about it was the settings and world-building.

I received an ARC of this from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm still having a bit of a hard time sorting out how I felt about this book. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it but I feel like I need to read this several times just to keep all of the characters straight. I appreciated that this was a nice quick fantasy read. There is a lot of great world building, magic, intrigue, corruption, love, way, betrayal, and monsters. The characters that I did manage to keep straight had dark and intriguing pasts, and I'm curious to see where their story line goes in the future with this series, in particular, Aris.
If you need a quick fantasy fix, this is a good one to start with. I'd definitely be interested in reading the next book in this series

This was a book I did not finish, I learned that when i reach 100 pages and still cannot get into the book, I don'T lose my time trying to finish it. I was not captivating for me

This was a fun, in-one-sitting fantasy read with decent characters and a dark, twisted world. I loved the feel of the book but I felt that it could have done with being longer to fully explore its premise. The ending was a little disappointing. Ok so it's the first book in a series but that doesn't mean you can just stop dead. It should be readable as an individual episode in its own right. I liked it but I think I would have loved it if the characters had been given more room and the ending had been wrapped up thoroughly.

#WhiteStarPhase #NetGalley

In an utopic world of fantasy where the forces of dark tries to conquest the world. This is a good book to read during the commuting

I enjoyed this, but I'm quite disappointed in how it ended. I mean, there was no ending. There is no resolution to any of the plot lines, and indeed, I can't see how the various lines will even be woven together really. I can understand that this is the first book of a series, but it was just so short, and the ending was just incredibly abrupt and unsatisfactory.

I did enjoy some of the characters in the book, but I felt that they needed to be fleshed out more to give us more of a sense of their personality.

One sentence review: A simple, quick read for a fantasy-lover.

Beckman creates characters that are interesting with dark histories which have twisted their morals until the heroes are quite villainous.

The world is dangerous and corrupt - fitting for these flawed characters. The world-building is efficient, there is little excess in the descriptions throughout this novel. 

I appreciated this for a quick, one-afternoon read. While the stories are not finished at the end of the novel, I believe I am done with their tales. I felt like I had the outline of a great fantasy series. The main points and action are very present, but I like to spend time in a world. I want to experience class at Hogwarts before I encounter the evil; I want to suffer the journey before I fight with the Dark Company; I want more than the skeleton of the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scott Beckman for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.