A review by snoakes7001
Map's Edge by David Hair
5.0
When Map's Edge begins, Dash Cowley is working as a healer in Teshveld, a town on the outskirts of the Bolgravian empire. It's the kind of place where people wash up when they have nowhere left to go and nowhere else to run.
Dash is coerced into trying to heal a man from a Bolgravian expedition into the unknown lands beyond Teshveld, and in doing so he acquires a journal that gives tantalising hints of a massive seam of Istriol in the lands to the north. Istriol is a mineral used to power sorcery and so is immensely valuable. Valuable enough that he unmasks himself to the rest of the townsfolk and comes clean that he is actually Raythe Vyre, an Otravian commander in a failed rebellion against the empire and a wanted man.
Most of the town's inhabitants have fled to the edge of the empire for their own reasons, and it doesn't take long for Raythe to convince a band of them to join him and his daughter Var on a quest to find and mine the mineral.
This is a really promising start to a series. Great characters and lots of action as the ragtag band struggle through some difficult terrain with the Bolgravian Secret Service on their tail. There are sorcerers on both sides making for some epic battle sequences. Although this first instalment is all about the journey, it ends with a scene that really leaves you wanting more - roll on book two!
Dash is coerced into trying to heal a man from a Bolgravian expedition into the unknown lands beyond Teshveld, and in doing so he acquires a journal that gives tantalising hints of a massive seam of Istriol in the lands to the north. Istriol is a mineral used to power sorcery and so is immensely valuable. Valuable enough that he unmasks himself to the rest of the townsfolk and comes clean that he is actually Raythe Vyre, an Otravian commander in a failed rebellion against the empire and a wanted man.
Most of the town's inhabitants have fled to the edge of the empire for their own reasons, and it doesn't take long for Raythe to convince a band of them to join him and his daughter Var on a quest to find and mine the mineral.
This is a really promising start to a series. Great characters and lots of action as the ragtag band struggle through some difficult terrain with the Bolgravian Secret Service on their tail. There are sorcerers on both sides making for some epic battle sequences. Although this first instalment is all about the journey, it ends with a scene that really leaves you wanting more - roll on book two!