Review: "Seven Forges" by James A. Moore

On an Amazon recommendation, I picked up "Seven Forges", a fantasy novel by James A. Moore.

I finished it about an hour ago.

Thoughts: So "Seven Forges" is ostensibly about a mercenary named Merros Dulver and his meeting a strange, gray-skinned people who live in a forbidding place called the Seven Forges, set amidst an icy wasteland of monsters and not much else.

The story is slow going, at first. Lots of setup as Dulver gets to know the mysterious inhabitants of the Seven Forges. And there's much (chapters and chapters of much) description of how badass these gray-skinned people are.

It's an entertaining read, if a bit plodding in parts. It diverges about a third through the book to a different point-of-view character then about halfway through, jumps to more POV characters. By the last quarter of the book, there's shit actually going down and multiple POVs introduced.

I can't say that I ever really got a good feel for any of the characters, save the later-added Andover who gets horribly mauled a few pages after his introduction.

Moore's narrative style is engaging enough, but I found the introduction and evolution of the characters left me cold. The end of the book was an obvious lead-in to the next novel but also sort of left me with a "huh, that's it?" kind of feeling.

I'm honestly not sure if I'll pick up the next book in the series. It was an okay diversion, but I can't say I care about any of the characters or what happens to them.

A hard read after the likes of Anthony Ryan and Jim Butcher.