Today’s novel inspired a publisher. Tracy Falbe found it difficult to sell her already-completed epic fantasy quartet, so she founded Falbe Publishing and, subsequently, the Brave Luck Books imprint to promote her own works. She is also reissuing classic novels in updated packages as various formats of ebooks; she states specifically that all of the ebooks she releases are ones that she has personally read and enjoyed herself, and I do, overall, agree with her tastes. She and her publishing company are based in northern California. She apparently spent some time in Las Vegas; enough that she could publish a book on how to play craps. Her website also hosts numerous subsites on different subjects, called FalbeNet, displaying a broad range of interests.

Dreiband Veta was a soldier in the Atrophane Horde; he deserted to explore the Wilderness, a land with no known human inhabitants. Before he gets there, he meets a woman named Miranda and her children; recently a slave, Miranda escaped poor treatment. While crossing the Wilderness together, Miranda’s daughter, Elendra, is kidnapped by a bizarre beast. The travelers follow it and end up in the land of the rys, blue-skinned, long-lived people with magical powers. The Queen of the rys, Onja, is worshipped as a goddess, but her powers are failing and there is a conflict between her and the next-most-powerful rys, Shan. Can Miranda get her child back without getting involved in too much politicking?

Ms. Falbe’s strength, I think, lies in her world- and character-building. Miranda has a backbone of steel, and insists on doing many of the same things that Dreiband can do (fighting, riding, surviving in the wild, standing up to Onja). Dreiband displays an amazing amount of depth for a soldier. There are a few other, lesser characters who are also interesting, but the book is mostly about Miranda and Dreiband. On the other hand, I liked the rys society and the human tribes in the west. Seeing the king of the Temu and his tribe was one of the high points of the book for me, although it was partially because finally Miranda and Dreiband were treated nicely.

Ms. Falbe included some rather gritty bits of reality in her novel. Miranda’s early life, when she was a slave, isn’t exactly a pretty one; her owner pimps her out for money, and she’s never allowed to keep any of it. She has two children, one around six years old, by age 21. We see a monster eat one of Dreiband’s fellow soldiers before too many pages are through; wounds are described in bleak but unsettling detail. I do feel the need to warn that there’s a torture scene near the end of the book; it nearly made me put the book down. Ms. Falbe’s inclusion of these details makes the setting and plot more realistic, but they’re certainly not for the faint of heart.

Overall, I think it’s an good start for a series. Ms. Falbe has set up quite a lot of threads, and it will be interesting to see what she weaves with them in the next volume. She’s set up pretty high stakes, what with the humans worshipping the rys queen as a goddess and any uprising against her also being rank blasphemy. I’m interested to watch the relationship between Dreiband and Miranda change as they learn to trust each other more. For fans of epic fantasy and Free (Legal) Books on the Internet, I would recommend giving the book a try; the first volume is available for free in e-format at the moment. The writing style may not be for some readers; Ms. Falbe writes in a rather ornate fashion, and tends to tell rather than show. For others, though, this will be an interesting new world.