Crown Colonies – Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot. wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge’s Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission.

Title: Of Limited Loyalty
Series: Crown Colonies
Author: Michael Stackpole
Rating:

of 5 Battle Axes
Genre: SFF
Pages: 483
Format: Kindle

Synopsis:
Several years after the events in the previous book, the Crown sends another agent to investigate a splinter group that has gone its own way and is looking to establish itself as an autonomous town.
What that agent, along with Owen Strake and the rest of the gang, find is Cthulhu’ic and a menace to the whole world. Can an understaffed,under-dragon’ed and under-magic’d group of people survive?

My Thoughts:
I knocked off 2 stars because this is NOT a duology. It is a series that has apparently been abandoned.
Good story, lots of action, magic, intrigue and stuff. But the ending is a cliffhanger and not a wrapping up of the story. Considering book 1 was released in ’10, book 2 in ’11 [this book] and nothing has been made mention, that I could see, on Stackpole’s site about a continuation, I am forced to accept the fact that Stackpole bailed out, again.

I think I shall have to be done with Stackpole’s books until such a time as he finishes a series or goes back to writing stand alone novels. That I could handle.

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge’s Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission.

Title: At the Queen’s Command

Series: Crown Colonies

Author: Michael Stackpole

Rating: 4 of 5 Battle Axes

Genre: SFF

Pages: 450

Format: Kindle

Synopsis:

An Alternate Fantasy History. A history where the King James Bible is the King Robert Bible. A world where magic is real, wurms are used as troops and NorIsle and Tharyngia are fighting as viciously as England and France ever did.

Owen Strake is a soldier, sent on a mission from NorIsle to explore and update the outer frontier regions of Mystria.

Only Owen is a pawn being used for hidden means. Can he throw off his shackles, fulfill his mission AND foil the hidden agenda that could spell his death?

My Thoughts:

In response to the above question, the answer is “Of Course!”. Owen Strake is the main character of the book and I thoroughly enjoyed following along. Owen goes from a snobby NorIslean to a Mystrian Patriot.

We get the best of the late 1700’s with magic, zombies and battles.

The last time I read Stackpole was back when he did his Age of Discovery trilogy, which was horrible. It put me off of him for many years. And after I recently went on his website, it seems that he’d been going through a dry spell back then and hated writing.

Thankfully, he was back in top form with this series. While very different from Talion or Once a Hero, it was just as enjoyable and in many ways seemed more mature, in talent. This was a joy to read and my only complaint is that it is part on only a duology instead of something longer.