Welcome to the Semi-Final stage of SPFBO 10! As you know, we already cut 25 books from our batch of 30 and announced our semi-finalists. Check out our SPFBO 10 page for more info! In the next few weeks, we’ll post group reviews of each semi-finalist, and then we’ll reveal our finalist on October 17th.
Our fifth and final SPFBO 10 semi-finalist review is for Bringer of the Scourge by M. Daniel McDowell. The order of the reviews within a post will be the following: first is the person who picked the book as a semi-finalist, and then the others in alphabetical order.
In the Semi-Finals all of us will try and read all of our semi-finalists in order to be able to determine our Finalist based on our overall scores.
Both in the Semi-Final and Final stages we’ll have a DNF rule in place: if a judge reads a book (either semi-finalist or finalist if they didn’t opt out beforehand), they have to read at least 25% of it. If they decide to DNF between 25%-50% they’ll have to give a score but can opt out of writing a review, and if they DNF after 50% (or not) then they also have to score AND write a review.
For Bringer of the Scourge we have 4 reviews and 5 scores for your reading pleasures.
So, without further ado, let’s take a closer look at our third semi-finalist!
Table of Contents

Series: | Song of the Scourgelands #1 |
Genre: | Fantasy, Epic Fantasy |
Publisher: | self-published |
Date of Publishing: | September 25, 2023 |


To save them all, the princess must first rescue herself.
Vierrelyne du Talorr, the last living daughter of the tyrant king, waits locked in a tower cell for the prophesied apocalypse only she can prevent. An army of three brittle allegiances, united under a rival prince, aims for the throne and lays siege to the castle in search of the princess and the fabled weaponry of the empire.
With the aid of her mentor in music and swords, and a desperate cultist sent to find her before the mercenaries do, Vierrelyne steals that formidable ancient weapon from her family crypt: a holy suit of armor and a diadem infused with the soul of a demon prince—the Bringer of the Scourge. With it, Vierrelyne discovers an unstoppable power, but the demon within is corrosive, hungry, and dangerously persuasive.
Vierrelyne is haunted by what it means to tame this power bequeathed to her, and by what means she might conquer it. When that rival prince finds her, it will take all the strength she can muster, for if the prophecy she dreads is true, the very weapons she wields might destroy everything—and everyone—she holds dear.

Arina
Read: 100%
Classic fantasy travel quest meets sweet berserker princess. I really enjoyed Bringer of the Scourge.
A twist on the “damsel in the tower” trope, it sets princess Vierrelyne on a journey of sorrow and self-discovery, when a siege attack releases her from the tower her father confined her to, deemed dangerous for the prophecy shrouding her fate in danger and blood. A prophecy that speaks of Vierrelyne’s potential and relates to her mother’s previous dealings with a demon-possessed relic.
As she flees the tower and travels with both an old friend and a new companion to stop demonic forces from overwhelming the land, Vierrelyne grows into this new world while proving her strength and capacity for both love and war. Torn between the two, she will either disprove or achieve her prophecized path.
The narrative style can sound a bit patchy at times, and some action scenes could use a bit more pacing. But I really enjoyed how distinct the characters were and that this was one unusual story that stood out, not only in my batch but in all my readings.
The characters are complex in that they are shown to step outside the usual expectations for characters in a story like this. Both soft and harsh, they have a pleasant duality.
Two of the main characters, including Vierrelyne herself, are also queer, which was a good surprise, seamlessly embedded in their stories.

Jen
Read: 100%
Bringer of the Scourge starts with a bang. It’s a quick drop-in-style with Vierrelyn locked up like she is Rapunzel, needing to escape quickly as the city is burning down around her with the fire fast approaching her tower.
Bringer of the Scourge promises an exciting time with that beginning, and there are definitely moments that leave you breathless but I think the intro of our three POVs as they worked towards their eventual meeting points, ended up dampening that initial momentum just a tad.
The repetition within the scenes, as each pov somewhat but not entirely overlaps, is just enough to make the beginning sequence have this leap-frog feel as we speed up to escape – slow down to meet character, and so on. Making the whole sequence feel longer than it actually was.
The entire story kind of followed that leap frog pattern of the beginning: exciting and rushed- jumping ahead to the next thing or event with out too much build-up to get you there, then slow and thoughtful to give us some time with the characters.
It made it difficult to follow and/or to gauge time spent in places or between events. So, like Mehren and Vi’s attraction felt from one page to the next though in reality, quite a lot of time had passed. That jumpy feeling was my only real hold-up throughout the story.
As we settle in, Bringer of the Scourge grows into this interesting and unique feeling world that as its secrets are revealed our understanding of the events open up as well. There are some pretty cool moments and some fun fights along the way that I thought were great – my favourite cool moment being when Vi tries to save everyone calling her armour to herself – very visual and I loved that! And I also really liked the final battle.
The cast:
Vierrelyne (Vi), because of a prophecy, her father-the King kept her locked away for the last 15 years.
Mehren is cursed to see the scourgelands which overlaps his vision of the world. He’s obviously been though some heavy stuff judging by his scars, something we learn about as the story unfolds.
Kharise, born under a dark star and fated to wander. She was hired to caretake and train Vi in weaponry among other things.
I enjoyed getting to know the characters the most and seeing the little bits we learn fall into place as we discover more about them and their world.
The characters are all kinds of damaged, and lonely, and each have their own unique story and pasts that were interesting with lots of growth along the way. (I especially liked finding about how Mehren’s curse came about. I love a mystery so that kept me intrigued.)
I also empathized with them and their struggles. Their feelings were easy to relate to; even being things that we’d (hopefully) never experience in life ourselves. I appreciate characters that make your heart hurt for them.

Liis
Read: 100%
I have to admit, I quite enjoy the ‘as prophesized’ trope. Someone says prophecy and I immediately feel a sense of dread. “God damn it, why me?!”… “I am in this predicament because of a prophecy whispered by wizards and mad men! Pick someone else!”… Prophecy is an immediate trap for the characters and it sets the stone for the story, stat.
Now, Bringer of the Scourge, I mean… Can you get any more ‘impending doom’ than this title? Exactly! And straight off the bat with this story (it’s brilliant, we don’t waste time) we’re in the pits of a kingdom falling, we have a one-eyed wizard who can travel through the veil and see more than regular folk with two eyes, and we have a villain. And, make no mistake, the princess in this story is no doe-eyed weakling. This princess, Vi, she’s going to grasp her opportunity!
It’s a pretty cool story. It reads quick, and it definitely took me for an adventure. What I most enjoyed about this book? The prose. Loved the prose. It’s just a touch above the simple with a few words thrown in that made me use the dictionary, but hey ho, new words to me are like money found on the ground – something to celebrate! Yes, the prose is going to be something that will divide the camp, but.. well, when isn’t it? And, at the start of the story, there was some repetition to the chain of events as it was told through different POVs, so that could also throw some readers, but personally, it didn’t feel like something that took away from the reading enjoyment. Not this time.
As far as dark fantasy foes? I am pleased I got to read this. It deserves the acknowledgement. And hello, this cover so totally rocks my boat for some weird reason! All in all, nice job, McDowell!

Timy
Read: 100%
I’m afraid this is going to be a short, and not very informative review, because not even a week after finishing it, I struggle to remember anything I wanted to say about it, and that probably tells you a lot. On the plus side, I read it from cover to cover – admittedly, this book is relatively short, but still.
Bringer of the Scourge builds on tropes (prophecy taking center stage that determines everyone’s moves), but it also turns them upside down in a sense. Vi is being held in a tower by his father who fears that she is the bringer of the end – ironically, the end comes on its own accord, but that gives Vi a chance to finally confront this stupid prophecy thing and get to the end of it once and for all. Her two main companions are Mehren, a wizard who works for the guy who made the prophecy in the first place, and Kharise who was her tutor for years. A good thing too, because out of the three Kharise has the most sense. Which, thankfully, actually helps Vi to get her revenge on those who ransacked her home. She (Vi, I mean) is a bit of a badass, but she is also naive and clueless. Which is understandable, really, as she was forced to live in a tower for the bigger part of her life. And yet, I failed to feel any sympathy for her. I liked Mahren slightly better with his backstory and traumas, but the author tried a bit too hard to tell us how much of a coward he is, which became grating at one point.
I wasn’t a big fan of the writing, a bit wordy for my tastes, but I mean, others love it so take that as you will. The worldbuilding could be a bit more in-depth to help the reader get invested in the story. Bringer of the Scourge is a book that I’d consider a character-driven novel, and I usually prefer that, however, I couldn’t care less about the characters, and the plot (or lack thereof) didn’t really help to make any kind of connection.
Since the author makes the plot move fast – I assume to get to the good parts – sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Like, when they are running away, get to this town which is supposed to be enemy territory, but instead of getting out of there as fast as they can, they make their leisurely time, even strike up an alliance with this group that’s supposed to be a big political part of the city pretty much out of the blue. Like, literally, Kharise meets this guy, decides to trust him (no fucking idea why, but there you go), and no one bats an eye. And then there is the romance plot which is just… 1) such a cliché (especially considering their pasts) and 2) it’s not even well developed to be believable.
Anyway, Bringer of the Scourge has a good idea at the base, with the princess taking her life into her own hands and basically saying “fuck the prophecy”. A pity, but ultimately, I wasn’t the right audience for this quick-paced epic fantasy. At least the demon was fun. Sort of.


Our score for Bringer of the Scourge by M. Daniel McDowell:

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