An Indie Review - Whispers of a World Breaker - Corey Ratliff

I’ll be honest, I went into this book tired of Dragon Focused epic fantasy fully expecting not to like it. I was wrong. The book isn’t without its flaws but Corey’s talents shine through in book one of The Elmerian Chronicles.

The first thing to note with this book is that Ratliff has an incredibly fluent writing style. His story is presented in a way that’s incredibly easy to digest and it really helped me to enjoy the tale he was telling without being bogged down in overly descriptive writing and world building. That isn’t to say that he hasn’t successfully built a world that feels vibrant and alive though, Ratliff has really gone all out with some unique fauna like his Valravn and some wonderful settings such as Az’ Grim and Bor Mesari. The character work was okay without being brilliant, especially on the side of Aric and Moro who I felt had a very similar voice throughout the book, I do think some of that burden has to fall with the narrator of the audiobook and not the book itself however. The Orcs however were very impressively done, getting such depth out of what are traditionally big green idiots was no mean feat.

Some of the dialogue I found a bit cheesy and unnatural, mainly when characters are talking about being powerful or potential power and I found the use of the word Badasses a bit disengaging as it felt a bit out of place in a fantasy novel but overall the dialogue was done well.

One major talent Ratliff has is his ability to make you empathise with both sides, I still don’t know who I’m rooting for in this book which is a testament to Corey’s ability to paint a picture of this quality with only the greys of morality.

Overall I liked this book. It isn’t perfect but is the first book of a self published epic fantasy series and context is important. It’s thoughtfully written in a well conceived and well crafted world, with an engaging story that is paced extremely well for a book of this size. I’m really excited to see where Corey takes this world and beyond, especially given some not so subtle hints that the Elmerian Chronicles could venture to other worlds and Genres. I would recommend reading a physical copy over the Audiobook unless these are re-recorded with another narrator as the current narrator just doesn’t do it for me and I think the characters suffer for it.

My parting comment is to say nothing more than the murmurs that Epic Fantasy is dead are nothing but a myth and Authors like Corey Ratliff are proving that time and time again. Give this book a chance, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

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