The Dominion - Defiant

Monsters from the time of myth emerge to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, but as usual the people of The Dominion do not take heed, until it is too late.

Chris Cloake???s second book in his Dominion series immediately follows on from the events of the first book, as Rupert rides out to reclaim his sister Sorcha from the clutches of the Gaticus.

Not only that, the fires of Rebellion threaten to tear apart the Dominion from the inside.

The Dominion ??? Defiant is written very much in a classical fantasy kind of vein and put me in mind of the prose of Porl Anderson, in that it has a kind of mythic quality to it. Some people will enjoy it, and others won???t. Me? I was fine with it.

There is some good world building in the story, with Chris Cloake building on the groundwork that he had done in the first book.

The second book of the trilogy is always the hardest to talk about as it has the most demands placed upon it, such as, did it continue to the story that had been set out in the first book, does it move the story along to its conclusion, and finally can it stand as a story by itself. Well, the answer to this in the case of The Dominion Defiant, is that it managed to fulfil that criteria.

In addition to that Cloake writes some good action scenes that pulls you along. Throughout the action scenes, he got the pacing and cadence of the story right, and I would happily bumble along with the action that was happening on the page. However, I think that the one thing that I noticed was that the pacing could sometimes slow down, especially when we came to matters of intrigue and politics, and it was at these times that I found that I could become a little overwhelmed with the amount of information described.

This definitely falls into the dark fantasy realm of the genre, and as anyone knows I do like to get my teeth into a good bit of dark fantasy.

With The Dominion ??? Defiant, Chris Cloake had me immersed in his world of intrigue and action, and his tale of grief and loss, war and rebellion, and things returning from the times of old to haunt a kingdom. It entertained me right till the end, and I cannot wait to see how the trilogy concludes