Reviewed by Chris

TITLE:  The Wanderer

SERIES:  Chronicles of the Riftlands #1

AUTHOR:  Rowan McAllister

PUBLISHER:  Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH:  200 pages

RELEASE DATE:  May 1, 2018

BLURB:  

After centuries of traveling the continent of Kita and fighting the extradimensional monsters known as Riftspawn, mage Lyuc is tired and ready to back away from the concerns of humanity.

But the world isn’t done with him yet.

While traveling with a merchant caravan, Lyuc encounters Yan, an Unnamed, the lowest caste in society. Though Yan has nothing but his determination and spirit, he reminds Lyuc what passion and desire feel like. While wild magic, a snarky, shapeshifting, genderfluid companion, and the plots of men and monsters seem determined to keep Lyuc from laying down his burden, only Yan’s inimitable spirit tempts him to hang on for another lifetime or so.

All Yan wants is to earn the sponsorship of a guild so he can rise above his station, claim a place in society, and build the family he never had.

After hundreds of years of self-imposed penance, all Lyuc wants is Yan.

If they can survive prejudice, bandits, mercenaries, monsters, and nature itself, they might both get their wish… and maybe even their happily ever after.

REVIEW:  

To be completely honest, there really is not a lot of plot in this book…but I bloody well loved it anyways. Most of the story is about a caravan making the trek from one side of the country to another, and while a lot of background/subplot stuff happens, it doesn’t have a direct impact on the events of this story except for maybe one instance. Mainly this book is the set up for a series, and the events that will transpire over the course of the following books. What you need to know for now is that Lyuc is a really powerful mage on the down-low–and with one hell of a past–and Yan is Nameless servant–basically the lowest caste in his society–who meet when Lyuc prevents a caravan guard from assaulting Yan. They are drawn towards each other, but age, life circumstances, caste, and probably a dozen other things conspire to keep them apart. There is also a shapeshifting horse named Bryn who is everything.

Despite this book feeling very much like a “set-up” story for the coming series, I can’t help but sharing my absolute love for it. If this is any indication of how the whole thing is going to feel/read like, I can’t fucking wait to read the next books.

The author did a fantastic job of creating a world that was real enough to be believable, but also mysterious enough to make you beg for more information about it. You get plenty of hints about backstory for Lyuc, but it knows exactly how many answers it can get away with not telling while also leaving you feeling like you got to know the man. And Yan is certainly less of a cypher than his counterpart, but he made up for that by being relatable in a way a centuries-old wizard of ridiculous power cannot.

I’d also like to say on the “centuries-old wizard” note…I absolutely adore how Lyuc actually feels his age. He feels tired, and simply done with humanity and the world and all its shit. And his relationship with his bestfriend/shapeshifting horse Bryn is just awesome. I love how their conversations come across like they have been having the same arguments, the same jokes, for ages…and how they like it like that. Their friendship feels very worn-in and true.

It also didn’t hurt that Lyuc was old…as in, he didn’t look like a twenty-year-old. He is very much a “Gandalf” type mage. I found the fact that Yan fell for him, despite not looking like your typical Romance Hero, entirely refreshing. And yeah, unfortunately, I can see this turning people off if what they came for was the sex-bod fantasy porn, but the humanity it brought to the characters was worth a thousand glistening abs. To me at least.

In the end I was incredibly pleased with what I got out of this book. Did I wish there was more? Yeah. And the fact this story felt like its job was to set up the characters and future plot arcs for the next books in this series is probably why it didn’t quite eek out a 5 star rating. But at the end of the day I had a blast reading this, and it has me so sold on any and all future books. It was an absolutely lovely fantasy story and if we are lucky a wonderful indicator of what we will have in store as the story progresses.

RATING:  

BUY LINKS:

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon