Welcome to the Final stage of SPFBO 10! As you know, the 10 blogs all picked their champion who advanced into the finals, including ourselves. Check out our SPFBO 10 page for more info! SPFBO 10 ends on April 30th, and so we’ll post our finalist reviews every two weeks or so until then.
Our 3rd SPFBO 10 finalist review is for The Oathsworn Legacy by K.R. Gangi. The order of the reviews within a post will be in alphabetical order.
A quick reminder about how we are proceeding in the Finals: our judges had the freedom to opt out of reading any of the books due to personal interest, time restrictions, unforeseen life events, etc. Our aim is to have at least 4 reviews/scores for each finalist.
Both in the Semi-Final and Final stages we 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 also have to score AND write a review.
For The Oathsworn Legacy we have 4 reviews and 5 scores for your reading pleasures.
So, without further ado, let’s take a closer look at our first finalist!
Table of Contents
| Series: | standalone |
| Genre: | Fantasy |
| Publisher: | self-published |
| Date of Publishing: | October 30, 2023 |
| Pages: | 642 |
Rawley and Baelin make a living the only way they know how—protecting the people of Centrum by slaying the dark things that stole their childhood: Monsters, and everything evil.
Though the work never ends, and there’s plenty of coin to go around, Rawley and Baelin discover a sinister secret hidden deep within the crevices of Centrum’s past. Centuries of lies and deceit unravel before them, and they soon shift from mere mercenaries to a force that will last generations.
At least, that’s their hope.
Dwarves in the west, Wroughtmen in the north, Elves in the east, and a tyrant king ruling with an oppressive fist, Rawley and Baelin balance on the precipice of total chaos.
Will everything they’ve accomplished be enough to save them from the shadows rising, or will a plot that’s generations old finally drag everything into the abyss?
Drew
Read: 100%
At its core, The Oathsworn Legacy is the story of two brothers, Baelin & Rawley Terricaut. Orphaned at a young age, they take to hiring themselves out as monster killers; both as a means of supporting themselves and of taking some measure of revenge for their loss. Told in an episodic fashion, each chapter adds to the world and the overarching plot the brothers gradually uncover.
The Oathsworn Legacy feels like a book in three parts. The first, and simplest, follows the brothers on some of their earlier hunts. While there are both characters and events that reappear or take on greater significance later, these first few adventures could easily work as stand-alone short stories; something which the author acknowledges is how the book started out. The downside of that is that there is a fair bit of repetition between chapters, something that might have benefited from a tighter edit.
The second section deals with the brothers, settling into their new roles as they prepare for the events to come. Several of the stories here deal with them making alliances and do a great deal to expand their, and the reader’s worldview. We also get a chance to see the brothers from the outside, as some of the supporting characters take over as the main POV. Here there tends to be a little less repetition but there is a great deal of telling, as opposed to showing, leaving some sections exposition-heavy and stilted as a result.
Finally, the third section deals with the overarching plot coming to a head. This was the section that worked best for me, especially since I often enjoy siege narratives. There are some great battle descriptions here, seen through various eyes as the POV shifts from 1st person to 3rd and back again, as the characters fight for survival.
There is a deal to recommend about this book; the world-building, the fight scenes, the central relationship. However, I was left unsatisfied. The format, barring the repetition that plagued the earlier chapters, wasn’t an issue in itself, but it did make the story feel uneven, with too much time spent on some adventures while others felt rushed, with some events skipped over or seeming to come from nowhere. Perhaps it would have been a benefit to expand this beyond a single book and give the latter sections and their characters a chance to truly shine.
Jen
Read: 100%
The Oathsworn Legacy is a chonker of a book but its style of telling is what makes it feel very digestible in a one bite at a time kind of way. At the risk of repeating every reviewer out there – it’s a collection of shorter tales that make up the whole picture. Very much like a season of television – Supernatural comes to mind here, because of the monster of the week feel in the shorter stories with an overreaching arc across them. I chose The Oathsworn Legacy to read over the holidays for that very reason. I thought it would be easier to keep up with self-contained stories like this while busy, and my plan worked well.
The Oathsworn Legacy had some cool ideas, I liked how the small-scale small-stakes stories turn rather large by the end of things. Also, I particularly liked the whole old-school feel of assembling an adventure group, while not ever actually doing that in the traditional classic fantasy way. It gave it a bit of a twist on the usual.
I did find this story-telling style kept me from really connecting to the two brothers Baelin and Rawley, but this a story written about their escapades from the pov of a different character, Simon, and that might be a little bit why I felt more connection to Simon and other characters than I did to the brothers themselves.
Also a lot of events happen off-screen – motivations and some big character choices are occasionally found out after the fact- things that would help you understand where their headspace is or was, at the time etc. I’m not overly keen on that style – I don’t want to see every choice but when a lot of important events occur off-screen, and I am given the “and this is the solution that problem we were having” I get frustrated because I want to see them surpass the problem.
The Oathsworn Legacy is an overall fun, actiony, and surprisingly quick read. I think a lot of people will enjoy the ease in which the stories are presented and for me I especially enjoyed the ‘monster of the week’ format for having some great scenarios. The Indiana Jones feel of Bhaliddar’s Defense was my favourite it was the story that really hooked me in and made me want to keep reading.
Liis
Read: 100%
The Oathsworn Legacy is a fantasy of epic proportions. It is also very wordy with its scenes – some like the wordiness more than others. I prefer my scenes a bit less dragged out, but the fact remains – wow! What started as one single story, the one that the book starts with, turned into something of a very ambitious and a hell of a feat for a debut.
Off the bat, for potential readers I can tell one thing – stick to it. If you find yourself struggling at the start, keep going, it does pay off. I am saying this because I had a really rough start with this book, maybe due to the structure, it felt slightly fragmented. It was like slices of life from the brothers’ life – a flash from here, a flash from there. And the individual slices were neat and different from each other but for some reason they didn’t seem to give me something to root for. Sure, the brother-duo was cool and they had their own dynamic with a dash of banter, but for some reason I remained apprehensive. But! But, the stories are connected and from the first story to the second and so on, there was a connection woven in. In a sense, one has to be patient until the speck of snow forms into a snowball. It was the chapter titled Oath of Ethel, at 40% mark, where I felt the whole book sink its hooks into me and I felt cozily immersed in the story. From 40% mark on, it was a go! I started seeing the big picture. Yet, I admit, to the very end, I still felt my eye glaze over at times where the bulkier descriptions were presented.
It is said that a book is an economical, social, political and cultural product of its time, and The Oathsworn Legacy had many currently relevant messages woven through it rather nicely, as part of the story, without being too “in your face” – I appreciate such nuance, which provides a moment of reckognition. It’s like the story is giving the reader a nod and an imaginary *taps nose
Overall, Gangi has done some heavy lifting with The Oathsworn Legacy. It’s one of those books that brings adventure and fairytale-like vibes, and as such is well worth checking out.
Tru
Read: 100%
The Oathsworn Legacy is pure classic fantasy for those craving Tolkien aesthetics, and I don’t just mean swords, sorcery, Elves, and Dwarves. This is the tale of the Terricaut brothers, Baelin and Rawley, who become monster hunters after losing their parents to a monster attack when children. During the first half of the book, each chapter is presented in a ‘monster of the week’ type format with the brothers tackling a particular monster. Each of these episodes introduce characters and aspects of the world that are expanded upon later. This format might not work for all, and unfortunately it didn’t work for me, as I found it much harder to connect with the story and characters.
At around the 40% mark, however, the book seems to leave this format and take on a more traditional structure as various pieces of the story converge. The two brothers create a monster-hunting school and recruit a variety of interesting side characters, some of which have their own POV and show a different side to Baelin and Rawley. Their quest becomes more traditional too, as they attempt to unite the Elves and Dwarves against a looming dark enemy and a threat of world destruction. This is where the Tolkien influence really shines, in my opinion, as there are strong themes of found family, brotherhood, and hope in their battles against evil, which as other judges have stated, feel oddly apt for these dark times back in reality. There’s a lot of heart here, and some emotional scenes heading to the end.
Unfortunately, I’ve come to realise that classic fantasy isn’t my type of fantasy, and The Oathsworn Legacy missed the mark for me for a few reasons, despite its charm. When I was a teen, I used to watch Dragon Ball Z, where the battles would drag out for weeks on end. And then Bulma went and married Vegeta off screen and I was outraged that we never saw how that happened. There are many instances of that here. We’re told about the monster school, but we’re never shown what it does or how it works. Much of the character development, including recruiting new students and staff, or even Rawley finding love, happens off page. I wanted to see more of that instead of drawn-out battle scenes. Some of these battle chapters were over seventy pages long and introduced a list of characters that exist essentially as red shirts to be killed off, and I felt exhausted by the end of them.
So much of the world and lore was presented through exposition, rather than shown naturally. To that end, The Oathsworn Legacy feels too ambitious. There’s too much story here, literally spanning decades, all squeezed into an already large book. I feel the story could be stronger if split into a series and allowed room to grow and develop those missing moments. Or perhaps I’m just not the right reader for this book.
Our score for The Oathsworn Legacy by K.R. Gangi:
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