Sam Sykes

Bravest Challenge, Bravest Victors, Bravest Links

So, Graeme Flory may have miserably failed us and brought great shame to his sheep-herding ancestors, but fortunately for us, the world is filled with many people who are not such incredible disappointments to country and kinsman.

Of course, I speak of THE BRAVEST CHALLENGE’S first victors!

Louis from LEC Book Reviews has completed the great challenge by reading David Bilsborough’s The Wanderer’s Tale, a return to Tolkien-style epic fantasy.  His thoughts?

In the end, as much as I might want to recommend The Wanderer’s Tale to even a slim, defined portion of the fantasy readership, but I find myself unable to. What David Bilsborough set out to do might have been admirable if he hadn’t done such a botched job of it. The results of his labor is a thick book that reads slowly, boringly and without much else. If you do somehow slug your way through this novel and for some reason enjoy it (and I can’t think of any reasons why you would) then the second volume in The Annals of Lindormyn, A Fire in the North, is available. I personally don’t have the heart to even go see if things improve in this sequel but well on you to do so.

Oh dear.  Well, poor fellow.  Louis did ask me what exactly I made of his findings and, to be honest, I’m quite pleased.  We’re not here to forsake, ridicule or lambast authors.  There are a few people out there who quite like Bilsborough.  Rather, we’re here to both move out of our comfort zones and to take a look at what might be great books with bad reputations.  I have great faith that we’ll see something like that in the coming weeks.

You can read Louis’ entire review here.

Next up, we have E.M. Edwards, talented writer (you can read some of his very cool excerpts here), who took on a challenge that was a little personal to more than one person: my very own Tome of the Undergates. Edwards prefaced this challenge by saying that, from everything he’s heard, he didn’t think it was going to be his sort of book.  He devoured it in a week, however, and had this to say (as taken from Twitter):

In the end it wasn’t the book for me, but I want to be fair where fair is due.  I think you’ve [Sykes] got great energy as a writer and that it was a character driven book, despite all the action.  But I’m glad I read it, and I wish you nothing but continued success as an author.

And I’m quite pleased with this result, as well.  I’ve been accused of being unconventional, as well as a deviant and bohemian before, and I’m always pleased to see peoples’ honest reactions to Tome. Sometimes they’re good (speaking of, did you see Ole Imsen’s excellent review of Tome here?  Or Specusphere’s positive review here?) and sometimes we get people who find that my style just doesn’t work for them.

All in all, the Bravest Challenge is a learning experience for us all: challenged, challenger and Steve from down the street.  Edwards does have a vested interest in supporting my beard so maybe Black Halo will be more for him!

And with the challenge completed, I am pleased to award The Raging Rothfuss to you both.

Congratulations!

As an aside, I have updated the Links section of the website to include a few more bloggers, a few charities and organizations I support and, most importantly, webcomics I follow.  If you’re a blogger that might like their work put up (and it helps if you’ve reviewed Tome), please let me know!  Also, man, that list of webcomics is pretty skimpy.  You better introduce me to some better ones.