Tags:
Book: The Fall of Cadoria: A story of love, war and betrayal where some battles can’t be won
Writer: Paul Willson
Published: March 7, 2024
ISBN: 9798876979025
Review:
This was a book that I got the chance to read thanks to the author, Paul Willson. He asked if I’d be interested in reading a critic’s copy and since I like to support independent authors, I agreed. What I knew coming in was that this was fantasy and from the synopsis, this would also include medieval style war. These are things that work in their favor for me.
The synopsis is: the menacing Empire of Thargoẑa is massing its forces to invade Cadoria once more.
Leading the defense against the empire and its paranoid Emperor Ignaẑio once again is the victorious Crown Prince Tyrran, the savior of Cadoria and the Lion of Heldwr, leading a small army.
However, this time feels different. As he leads his army to halt the empire’s advance at Heldwr Fort, Tyrran is seized by the growing sense that something is wrong. There is no sign of the Thargoẑan scouts. His intelligence chief has vanished. To make matters worse, his wife Princess Braganẑa, insists on accompanying him with their children to see Prince Tyrran’s preparations for battle.
In the aftermath, Prince Tyrran’s destiny is forever changed and he must grapple with a devastating betrayal.
What I’ll say and I’ll commend Willson is that this story sucks you in from the beginning. It can be difficult for me to land into fantasy novels, because you need to understand the world it is taking place. I thought this did a great job at setting up the kingdom this happens in, Cadoria. We also know that there is an empire that has conquered this continent in Thargoẑa. The last remaining holdout is Cadoria. This gave me vibes of the conflict between Sparta and the Persian army. They are outnumbered, but Cadoria has a better strategy which allows them to stave off being conquered. That goes to the credit of Prince Tyrran and his tactics. There are also similarities here to how things play out as well.
Now as you can see from the title, Cadoria loses this fateful battle. What I’ll credit here is humanizing Prince Tyrran where my heart sinks when he realizes he cannot win. I’m not going to spoil what happens, but this gets depressing seeing him trying to cope. His life is shattered and completely changed. There is a good parallel here to true life. I’m married and a father to a daughter so including his family is something else that I thought was good. Seeing his growth kept me wanting to see where things would go next.
Let me then shift over to his wife, Princess Braganẑa. This sets up early that she is intelligent and capable of politics. She helps her husband, but the more we learn about her, we see that she strives for more. What is good here is that this couple are opposites. Princess Braganẑa is good at the social game and carries the look of what royalty should be. She pushes Prince Tyrran to be better here. He’s more of a bruiser and a warrior. He knows how to win the common people over to which he helps his wife with. They are the perfect couple, even if their marriage isn’t always. This is something that I connect do with my own wife. We have fights, but in the end, we make each other better. This also explores gender dynamics. We see that much like in our world, men fear a strong woman. Braganẑa must fight and not show weakness, while not being too harsh.
What I’ll also say is that I love the battle sequences we get. This doesn’t linger too long on them. There is a deep knowledge of fighting from this era of history. Whether it is talking about protecting castle walls to prevent being overrun to the siege weapons that would do that. There is an understanding as well of battle strategy without bogging things down with it. These are things that I appreciated since this style of fighting interests me. We also get a look at politics here. There are parallels again to things that are relevant today. They can be more simplified here due to the lack of technology. I still appreciated these aspects.
In conclusion, I enjoyed reading this. I flew through and it was hard to put down. This was a fast read for me. I’m interested to read more from Willson. I also see that this is the first book in a series, Gods and Runes. There are elements of this here, but they’re subtle which is good. I’m curious to see where things go next.
My Rating: 8 out of 10