SPFBOX FINALIST REVIEW #1: The Oathsworn Legacy by K.R. Gangi

 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Chosen by: Covers with Cassidy

Each year, author Mark Lawrence hosts the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off which was created to shine light on self-published fantasy novels that readers might not otherwise find on their own.  This year, I've decided that I'm going to try to read all 10 of the finalists.  So far 6 finalists have been selected and I decided to start with Covers with Cassidy's pick The Oathsworn Legacy by K.R. Gangi.

I will say that this is going to be a tough one to beat.  At the moment, this book only have 19 ratings on Goodreads with an average rating of 4.74 stars.  This is such a hidden gem.  Told in vignette/short story format, the book follows monster hunters Rawley and Baelin Terricault.  After losing their parents to monsters, the brothers set out to hunt monsters and end up trying to defeat a great evil.

I was initially worried that the storytelling style would make the pacing of the story feel choppy and affect the character development.  I ended up being very impressed with how Gangi told his story.  There was enough connection between each story that it allowed the plot to flow smoothly and kept the pacing moving steadily.  There wasn't a lot of filler that would slow down the plot and everything just kept ramping up until our last few stories.

The characters were also great.  Rawley and Baelin reminded me a lot of the Winchester brothers from Supernatural.  They wanted to fight the monsters so that other people wouldn't have to go through what they did with the loss of their parents.  Our main side characters were also really strong.  We had Simon, a shapeshifter who was our main narrator, Helgatha, a witch who teamed up with the brothers, and Danial, a deserter from the king's army who joined up with the brothers after being disillusioned with his service to the king. I ended up feeling so strongly for these characters and there were a few times where I had to put the book down so I had to have a good cry for our characters.

My only criticism is that there were some very minor typographical errors throughout the book.  They weren't anything that took away from the story itself, they were just a few things that I noticed here and there.

Overall, please pick this book up.  It deserves it's place as a SPFBOX finalist and could definitely work well for a lol of readers.