Chalice of Echoes
Nexus of Arcanus Series
A loyal team is on a noble quest to stop a villain’s dark plans in the intriguing fantasy novel Chalice of Echoes.
Part of a continuing series, Steven W. Truelove’s involving fantasy novel Chalice of Echoes follows a group’s efforts to stop a vicious sorceress.
Soleena is a dreaded villain with goals “tied to forces ancient and restless … that should remain untouched.” She plans to “dominate the Nexus,” curses the destruction of the Shadow Codex, and anticipates a future in which “the world [will] kneel” before her. To succeed, she will have to pass into “a desert realm of dragons” and retrieve a goblet that will grant her immense powers—at a cost.
Against Soleena stands Elrith and his team, a motley group that plans to gather the elemental artifacts that are “key to saving our world and a risk that could destroy it.” If they are to defeat Soleena, they have to hurdle obstacles including fae guardians; secretive alchemists; Lord Gidreon, a collector who also seeks the artifacts and who isn’t “exactly generous with details”; the Lizard King; and those who do Soleena’s bidding, like vicious goblins and a deceptive hermit. They receive the assistance of new allies, too, including a woodland warden who “carried the forest with him in his worn, earth-brown linens and leathers,” a wise bard, a dragon, and two self-sacrificing protectors of artifacts.
The prose is thick and atmospheric, relishing in scene-setting details:
Luminescent mushrooms clung to the trunks of ancient trees, their glow casting shifting patterns on the forest floor, while silver-edged ferns brushed against their legs, leaving a faint shimmer of magic in their wake.
Elsewhere, “enchanted trinkets and potions … shimmered with iridescent hues,” and an underground chamber has “walls [that] glisten … with clusters of crystals.” However, the abundance of similes becomes distracting at times. Further, instances of repetition undermine the text’s enchantments (much flickers, pulses, and shimmers) as do a few muddled details. And while the groups’ surroundings are always well-described, important features, including the Sylvan Seal, are under described, leading to narrative gaps. Still, the writing is much tighter in this book than it was in the first series volume, and it holds attention throughout.
Made up of swift chapters with cliffhanger endings, the story is replete with surprises and new challenges. Elrith’s team solves riddles and puzzles and interprets symbols, making steady progress as they go. Their dangerous work is punctuated by moments of respite, as when they twice pause post-battle to dine with the fae, or when Drutle drops quips in the wake of tense fighting or portal travel: “If I’d known we’d be crashing an underground forest party, I would’ve brought my fancy boots.”
Soleena works on tasks separate from the team’s for much of the book, though the threat of her hangs in the background of their quest. And while Elrith and his team’s successes have a happenstance, inevitable quality, seeming less reliant on their skills than on chance and convenient revelations, the story remains engaging to its suspenseful ending. It stands to ensnare the interest of those well-versed in role-playing games, who are bound to look forward to the next series installment.
Wonderment pulses through the pages of The Chalice of Echoes, a fantasy novel that functions as a bridge tale in an ongoing quest to protect great magic from one who would abuse it.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
