I really liked the descriptive, spare, but introspective style of the language, but the story left me a little confused.

The story opens with a cliffhanger—a guy is scaling a cliff one-handedly and carrying a cup of tea in the other. Upon reaching the top, he then settles down to go all pervy stalkery, watching some girl’s butt without her knowledge. And we as readers along for the ride, looking over his shoulder, end up complicit as peeping Toms as well, which I did NOT appreciate. It would have been a whole lot less creepy if the author had clued us in ahead of time with some foreshadowing that she is his girlfriend and that the cup of tea is for her! So the beginning was a bit jarring for me. Consent is a big issue these days and that scene felt icky and invasive to me.

This is a story of exploration and coming of age. The main character is an explorer—literally and figuratively— to find his place in the world. He’s a boy with strength, heart and individuality. In his village, those with deformed bodies are declared unusable, and they are sent to a neighboring village, which he goes to find.

Is this is classified as science fiction fantasy? I’m not familiar enough with fantasy. The words “cohorts” and “outliers“ struck me as strangely academic, belonging to a college textbook rather than fiction about a low tech agrarian society.

He finds some weird magical rock that I couldn’t figure out, and that seriously bugged me. And speaking of being bugged, wasn’t there an inscrutable, strangely vampiric bug as well? What was it there for? Local flavor?

I realized that I didn’t get as much out of the story as the author was expecting me to, so I started over, but I just couldn’t. The narrator has a nice voice with inflection, but needs more syncopation and emphasis. A little too much like Wesley Crusher, you know? I just couldn’t.

Three or more stars for the writing, two for the story, and one for the narrator. If I had a text version, I’d be happy to review it instead.

The new cover art with the rock in the hand is terrific and a HUGE improvement over the previous Rorschach’s blot with the hand-antennae.

Thank you NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my feedback.

Written 12/31/21 but posted 08/26/23. So sorry for being so very late!

Thank you, NetGalley, for the advance audio copy of Temple of Conquest by Mark Broe.
I went in blind and stayed for the ride.
#TempleofConquest #NetGalley

This is a story about growing up, tackling the paths ahead, the main character life spins in a direction he never planned, some time good and some times heart breaking, but ever tackling the darkest time the drive for adventure and discovery all was pushes the character on.