Matthew Willis's Reviews > The Sons of Thestian

The Sons of Thestian is a superbly original fantasy adventure. I was immediately drawn in to the lives of the main characters and the world they inhabit. Rufus and Jionathan were engaging and pleasingly different leads, while the fearsome Fae is far more than your average 'warrior maiden'. Furthermore, from the outset the pace rattles along and I found the book genuinely hard to put down. The stakes get ever higher and it isn't long before the members of the little band are forced to make unenviable decisions and we're right along with them in hoping it's for the best.

The world of the novel proudly bears its Celtic influences with some of the more obvious tropes like the Washer In The Ford and the Fisher King, but the narrative does far more than simply repackage traditional stories with 'modern' character motivations. The attention to detail is admirable - the cultural differences between the capital city and outlying towns, for example are marked and convincing. This is no homogenous 'fantasy kingdom'.

But it's the characters and their struggles, individual and collective, that drive The Sons Of Thestian, through the early struggles in a terrifying forest, through the rising realisation of a threat greater than anyone imagined, betrayals, redemptions, mistakes, to a genuinely surprising ending.