Book Review
Title: Greedy as a Ghoul by Casey Sutton (Malfus: Necromancer Unchained Book 0.5)
Genre: Grimdark, Fantasy, Short Story
Rating: 4 Stars
So I got my hands on this arc of the prequel story to Malfus, Necromancer Unchained which is releasing this summer and it sounded interesting. Labelled as grimdark fantasy one of my favourite genres following a rogue necromancer named Malfus and honestly I couldn’t wait to get into it. I have to say that this story immediately sucked me into the world and I can’t wait to learn more about Malfus and his history and abilities when the first book comes out in June. Malfus is a studying necromancer at the Academy when he learns something that gets him kicked out and he has to flee from his home. We soon learn that this might be the power to truly bring someone back to life not just create zombies and he wants this power in order to bring back his lover, Kiara.
When Malfus stumbles across a recent battlefield he takes the opportunity to develop his skills as well as raiding their bodies from anything he can sell so can get hot food and shelter for the night. During this time we learn that Kiara has been dead for a little while and all Malfus has of her is a severed finger which he is preserving with magic but even that has its limit so if he is going to bring her back he needs to do it sooner rather than later but it might be more complicated that he believes. Things get taken up a notch when Malfus senses something watching him while he and the zombies are raiding these bodies and it puts him on edge.
Malfus eventually ends up stumbling on a ghoul which are vicious creatures especially when it comes to their meals which Malfus is disturbing. He backs away but soon realises the ghoul isn’t alone, now he and his zombies are fighting for their survival and what a battle it was. Malfus ends up sacrificing all but one of his zombies to escape the ghouls for good but all of the loot he is collected is gone apart from a handful of coins that will keep him going for a day or two but he’s essentially back to square one. I really liked where the story was going and how the character arc was set up but I did have one major issues and that was the way the story was put together. Now I know from reading arcs for years that they aren’t the final copies and there will be some minor errors that need to be dealt with before publication but there were many in this copy. From missing or replaced letter to half of words being missing it made the story very difficult to read in places as you have to guess words. I don’t know whether it was just a formatting error in the digital copy or whether those errors were also present in other formats but it put me off a little and knocked the rating down.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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