Remy Apepp

This book is written as a stand alone but is part of the Tales of the Mythusian Empire series.

It definitely took me a while to grasp that there was more to this tale of chaos than I was reading in the first half; where you are given glimpses of a gladiator arena, then a room with an intimate conversation between the gladiator named Lux and a being called Illiaz. The first half of the book jumps back and forth between those two differing plots and it is confusing in a way that makes you keep reading and wondering; how are they connected? Why is there so much pain, and blood, and dysfunctional memory?

As you jump into the second half it is abundantly clear that you were reading as if from the perspective of a broken individual being given bits of his own personality and story while trying to figure out how he got there in the first place.

It all comes together in a glorious and shattering end of revulsion, acceptance, and renewal of a broken mind from friendship, selfishness, and a desire to prove their worth as more than they were assigned.

I hope you find yourself as wholly absorbed and entranced with this story as I found myself with it!

*I received a free ebook copy from publishers Thinklings Books in an Early Readers Review from Library Things and am voluntarily leaving this review.… (altro)

Disclaimer: An electronic copy of this book was provided in exchange for review by publishers Thinklings Books, via Library Thing.

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It’s pretty much a given that frequent readers of fantasy accept that not everything in the universe they are entering will be explained up-front. Much will be obscured until the author judges the time is ripe for revelation.

Remy Apepp, in ‘The Blessed’, has perhaps stretched that permissiveness to the breaking point. From the moment the mysterious Lux awakens an amnesiac in the castle of the equally mysterious Illiaz, the situations and dialogue are opaque, gliding along a Möbius timeline that splits and twists and doubles back on itself like a butterfly in a house of mirrors. Just who Lux really is and whether Illiaz is his host, his owner, or his lover remains in question as the two engage in dialogues that cast more heat than light. Illiaz tells Lux “You won’t die for as long as you don’t kill me; I won’t strive to die for as long as you live.” Gentle Reader may not be sure quite what that means, but knows it’s damn well important.

Apepp’s writing is evocative, with a simmering erotic undertone of scent and taste and texture, and a never-absent awareness of the fragility of the flesh. But the reader who wants to know who these two men are and why they are somehow locked together in this remote manor will have to take the first two-thirds of the book on faith, and won’t have the penultimate question answered until near the end. As for the ultimate question – and this reviewer is going to provide neither that question nor its answer – the reader will have to plunge again into the bloody, magic-ridden universe of the Mythusian empire.

But before that happens, be warned that there will be blood, and death, and suffering both physical and psychic, far beyond the realm of human experience. This tale is not for the squeamish, and its quiet horror grows to the inevitable climax as inexorably as a fallen fruit rots into mould.

How does one assign a rating to a story this unique? One can only acknowledge that Apepp has pretty much thrown most of the rules out the window here. Some readers are going to bail out at the end of the first section; others will race through to the last page and immediately go looking for more of the author’s harrowingly beautiful work. That said, this reviewer is going to arbitrarily hang a 4.5 star rating on ‘The Blessed’ and let it go at that.… (altro)