For fantasy fans seeking escapism from the mortal grind, Ben Peek’s epic fantasy trilogy, Children, reaches its second installment with Leviathan’s Blood (following The Godless and preceding finale The Eternal Kingdom).
With dead gods, immortals, quantum entanglement theory, and sword fights, the trilogy has all the irrational, anything is possible, ingredients to keep readers hooked.
With world events getting stranger by the second it is no surprise that fantasy fiction is a genre that is still all the rage, with readers on their own quests for new titles to fulfil the void left by Lord of the Rings (both in print and in the cinema) to their wait for the next instalment of Games of Thrones. This is no longer a genre restricted to geeks. As long as there as there are fears to be solaced, disillusionment with technology and politics, or otherwise, humans will be longing for a time or place in which events can be chalked down to good, old-fashioned magic.
In Peek’s trilogy, the gods are dead. Their bodies are the foundations of mountains, the curses on coast lines and the blood that taints the ocean. What made them divine now seeps into the world, infecting men and women, allowing them to see the dead, to walk through fire, to shatter the Earth.
In the Mountains of Ger, a small town by the name of Mireea has fallen. A girl who claims to be the child of the dead gods has gathered her forces and is intent on reclaiming what was once theirs. But the god’s forces have angered an ancient man who can talk with the dead. He has labelled the child an abomination and declared war on her. In Leviathan’s Blood, the opposing forces approach the Floating Cities of Yeflam, where they hope to convince the city of their cause. Meanwhile, across the ocean, Bueralan Le has returned to with the soul of his dead brother. In his grief, he does not realise that a man with a terrible history has come to find him.
The trailer created by Peek is an enticement into the series with its graphic representation of extracts from Leviathan’s Blood on a backdrop of mountains and storms. With the trilogy’s interweaving, complex plotlines, high tension and medieval feel it’s a dark epic just waiting discovery.
Check out Leviathan’s Blood at amazon.
