The Way of Edan
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Beschreibung
Buchinformationen
Beiträge
„The Kingdom of the Eternal will awaken when the Way of Edan holds sway over all of Eormenlond. So say the prophecies. With unrivalled power in the gift, the Supreme Priest Bledla leads Torrlond and its mighty army to convert rival kingdoms by the sword and by the fang. Among the gathering resistance is the sorceress Sequara, whose mission is to protect her island and her Andumaic faith from the Torrlonders’ aggression. As holy war looms over the kingdoms of Eormenlond, a chance encounter bestows a terrible curse upon a young man. Dayraven’s curse may decide Eormenlond’s fate. But first, with the help of unlikely friends, he must survive the shattering of his world. „ Neulich sagte ich in einem meiner Videos, dass ich im Grunde nicht genug kriegen kann, von Fantasy in tolkinscher Manier, die jedoch mit einer modernen frischen Stimme erzählt ist. Aber von mir aus darf es immer wieder The Chosen One sein, es darf immer wieder gern ein zentraler gefährlicher weltenumspannender Konflikt sein, in dem alles ins Trudeln gerät und verschiedene Parteien miteinander ringen. Und genau das hat Philip Chase geliefert. So viel wie ich weiss, hat er die englische Sprache studiert, ist geschichtsbegeistert und ganz offensichtlich mag er Europa. Das Buch liest sich wie ein Abenteuer aus den Angelsächsischen Chroniken, Namen, Orte, Teile der Mythologie sind inspiriert durch das frühe Mittelalter in England. Wir begleiten Dayraven, der aus dem "Elfenschlaf" erwacht, was eigentlich nicht sein kann und dies offenbahrt, dass er eine große verborgene Kraft besitzt. Ist er der aus den Phrophezeihungen? Der Hohepriester Bedla will das nicht glauben. Er hält sich selbst für einen Auserwählten, durch den der Prophet Edan spricht und Bedla gehört zu der Sorte Priester, die ihre Religion mit dem Schwert verbreiten. Ein grosser Krieg steht bevor und wir sehen wie Philip Chase seine Figuren, zu denen auch eine mutige Magierin Sequara und eine uralte weise „Hexe“ gehört. Ich folge dem Autor schon lange auf Booktube, er betreibt einen Fantasy Review Kanal und so habe ich auch die Veröffentlichung seiner eigenen Fantasyreihe in den letzten Jahren beobachtet. Da nun alle 3 Teile veröffentlicht sind und dieses Jahr sogar ein weiteres Buch in diesem Universum erschienen ist, habe ich die Reihe gestartet und freue mich hier im Jahr 2026 noch so viel mehr zu entdecken. Dieses Buch war ein vielversprechender Start.
Reading has been very slow for me this year so far, and I am way behind my set goal for this year’s reading challenge. So at this time, I am already looking more into shorter stand-alone novels instead of going for the gran fantasy epics I love to read most of the time. Still, I am also infamously inconsistent when it comes to sticking to plans, so of course I had to sabotage myself and finally start reading Philip Chase’s Edan trilogy, just because one of his videos from his youtube channel kinda put me over the edge and instigated me to do it (so, well done, Sir). Just having finished the first part, The Way of Edan, and wanting to return to review the stuff I do more regularly anyways, this is as good a point a start as any, so let’s dive right into it. First thoughts first, I loved how the book immediately drew me into the brewing conflict right away and immediately pointed at what will probably be one of the central themes of the trilogy, in how organized religion can be abused to further worldly and church-related goals even by despicable deeds. And without wanting to go to deep into real-world comparisons, it’s probably no coincidence that the way of Edan is the one monotheistic religion in a world of polytheism being at the forefront of that behavior. Though just to clear that up, it also becomes clear very soon that this world is build on ages-long strife and conflict, so if you’re looking for innocence in this world, you probably won’t find any. So while I became a bit concerned with the first two scenes because of the brutality involved in it, I was immediately hooked and with the next scene, the author immediately soothed my fears by continuing with a very calm, peaceful scene, showing that the book wouldn’t be all grim and that there might be something to hope for. Even when that peace, of course, would be destroyed very soon. That scene also introduces our main character, Dayraven, a young warrior, growing up in peace and looking for a hopefully uneventful life, soon-to-be happily married with his beloved Ebba, whom he loves to tell tales from past events to (story-telling being another important topic throughout the whole novel). In this case, the tale of how the long-standing enmity between the kingdoms of Adanon and Caergilion came to pass, which is not only a beautiful way to build a world akin to what Tolkien did in his books, but which of course is also an important piece of information to better understand why events in the book can play out the way they do. The story really starts when Dayraven gets called to partake in a hunt for the monsters that have killed a shepherd’s young son, where he has a fateful encounter that not only changes his life forever, but also awakens a nearly limitless magical potential within him, turning him (unknowingly yet) into a central part of a world-wide game of power played by others and maybe even the Chosen one of an old prophecy. The fear of his folks created by this event forces him to leave his home; sent by his aunt and powerful sorceress Urd to another mage where he might find the education needed to control his new powers. Accompanied only by his trusted friend and bondsman Imharr, they set out to find Galdor, but of course things don’t turn out the way they are supposed to, and the two young man land exactly where Urd warned them not to go, enlistened in the army of Torrlond just setting out to conquer the neighboring kingdom of Adanon as the first step to complete world domination and destroying every other religion to make the Way of Edan the only way to follow. And while he is on his way into the thick of battle, gathering friends on the way, powerful people conspire to destroy him at the same time, others try to save him to use him for their own goals. There’s quite a few things to love about Philip Chase’s debut novel, especially if like me you grew up on devouring Tolkien and his world building. Like Tolkien, Chase uses tales from the past, ballads about historic events, and completely foreign-sounding languages to convey the sense of living in a different world to great effect. And I think that the author shares at least some of the sensibilities regarding the use of language with the linguistic genius Tolkien was, and that makes the read that much more enjoyable compared to a lot of other contemporary authors. At the same time he does world-building differently enough to not be considered a mere Tolkien-clone. There’s no greater evil power at work here like Morgoth/Sauron was (at least none I am aware of as yet), this is basically just what people can do to each other based on their believes and ideologies. And even the supposed bad guys, especially those of the religious sorts, all have their underlying worries and doubts that makes them at least understandable, even if it still is terribly fanatic and completely denying other people to decide for themselves. So far, the only complete villain is Torrlond’s King, who is all about power for himself, not wasting a single (even if flawed) thought about the greater good like Bledla and his fellow High Priests are capable of. On the other hand, the good guys aren’t thoroughly good though. Even Urd is totally willing to use Dayraven as a political pawn in a game he has no real idea about, and while, Sequara crown princess to the isle kingdom Asdralad and maybe the second most significant character in the sequels to follow is obviously torn between her sympathies for the people around her and what she considers as her political duty as future Mage-Queen, she still does mostly what she does for political reasons and while she will mourn the people dying for those reasons, she doesn’t really ask herself at least once if that’s a price worth paying (I may be overly harsh here, my own political convictions coming into play here). So while this world is still full of magic and wonders, it isn’t quite as far away from our reality than Middle-Earth is. And while there’s tons of brutality in the fight scenes making things even more realistic, it also isn’t completely grim and hopeless, which, at least to this reader, is a boon keeping me interested. I have already talked about some of the characters in the novel and that is another thing I quite liked about this book. Dayraven, Imharr, Sequara, Edan’s high priests, most of them have chapters or scenes where we can see things from their point of view, learning about their motivations and, in the end, making them human. And even with more side characters, there’s always little details turning them from archetypal figures into full-fledged characters. And again, Philip Chase makes great use of those details to build his setting by showing so as to avoid a huge backdrop of explanations onto the reader. There’s a few things I’d like to point out that I think could have been improved upon. I feel like there’s this tendency with modern authors to perfectly craft scenes to build the whole tale, where that loses the natural flow of things because the reader can see the construct behind it, and I think that’s also the case here. I already talked about the prologue scene, that I really liked but that still took me out of the story because it was so obvious how it was used to set things in motion (and also set up themes within the story). There’s also the scene when Imharr and Dayraven find themselves enlistened into the Torrlond army, that came pretty much out of nowhere, where it’s clear that it was done to get the characters into the position they need to be for the end of the novel. There’s also a few minor issues with pacing, that made the finale feel a bit rushed compared to the slower speed the story had till then. Made the final battle into a real page turner, and I was biting my nails because I wasn’t quite sure if Chase would pull the trigger on Dayraven, but on the other hand, there were so many things that needed to happen at the perfectly right moment to let things end the way they did, that I would have preferred a more natural, slower flow, even if that would have meant adding another 100 pages or so to the novel. Again minor nitpicks, and it didn’t really distract from my enjoyment of the novel. In fact, this is certainly one of the better debut novels I have read in recent years and I am completely in for the ride. I really love the language and the style of the book that, while clearly being oriented on the classics of the genre, is modern enough to appeal to readers way younger than me. A lot of the characters are written in an appealing way, and going back to Tolkien once more, as someone who loved how much importance he put on the topic of friendship between the members of the Fellowship, seeing Philip Chase doing the same thing with his group of heroes makes this into a very satisfying reading experience. Can’t wait to read more about Day, Imharr, Karan, Gorrn and Orvendil and even Abon (though that one is still a bit too mysterious to me, so we’ll see how that guy develops). I also already stated how much I really love the world building going on and the way it was done in this book. There’s that huge mystery still to be revealed, concerning that world’s elves and their connection/role to the systems of magic and religion, there’s the dweorg ( a really interesting spin on traditional dwarves whose culture I would really love to learn more about, and best of all, there’s this feeling of a living, breathing world at a really important crossroads regarding it’s history, and I really want to know how everything turns out and how that will change the world in the end. This said, I already came into this novel expecting to like it (based on what I learned about the author’s background and literary taste from his videos), and I am really glad to be able to say that this book didn’t disappoint at all. If you like Epic fantasy with a grim element with all the traditional elements from the classics but with very interesting spins on them, if you like character-driven stories still with a huge focus on world-building, this here might be for you. I don’t want to do too much namedropping especially regarding classics (already did that too much anyways), but there’s quite a few younger fantasy authors I came to appreciate in recent years (Mark Lawrence, Anthony Ryan, Robert Jackson Bennett, Jen Williams, just to name a few) and I already feel save adding Philip Chase to that list of authors to follow.
Beschreibung
Buchinformationen
Beiträge
„The Kingdom of the Eternal will awaken when the Way of Edan holds sway over all of Eormenlond. So say the prophecies. With unrivalled power in the gift, the Supreme Priest Bledla leads Torrlond and its mighty army to convert rival kingdoms by the sword and by the fang. Among the gathering resistance is the sorceress Sequara, whose mission is to protect her island and her Andumaic faith from the Torrlonders’ aggression. As holy war looms over the kingdoms of Eormenlond, a chance encounter bestows a terrible curse upon a young man. Dayraven’s curse may decide Eormenlond’s fate. But first, with the help of unlikely friends, he must survive the shattering of his world. „ Neulich sagte ich in einem meiner Videos, dass ich im Grunde nicht genug kriegen kann, von Fantasy in tolkinscher Manier, die jedoch mit einer modernen frischen Stimme erzählt ist. Aber von mir aus darf es immer wieder The Chosen One sein, es darf immer wieder gern ein zentraler gefährlicher weltenumspannender Konflikt sein, in dem alles ins Trudeln gerät und verschiedene Parteien miteinander ringen. Und genau das hat Philip Chase geliefert. So viel wie ich weiss, hat er die englische Sprache studiert, ist geschichtsbegeistert und ganz offensichtlich mag er Europa. Das Buch liest sich wie ein Abenteuer aus den Angelsächsischen Chroniken, Namen, Orte, Teile der Mythologie sind inspiriert durch das frühe Mittelalter in England. Wir begleiten Dayraven, der aus dem "Elfenschlaf" erwacht, was eigentlich nicht sein kann und dies offenbahrt, dass er eine große verborgene Kraft besitzt. Ist er der aus den Phrophezeihungen? Der Hohepriester Bedla will das nicht glauben. Er hält sich selbst für einen Auserwählten, durch den der Prophet Edan spricht und Bedla gehört zu der Sorte Priester, die ihre Religion mit dem Schwert verbreiten. Ein grosser Krieg steht bevor und wir sehen wie Philip Chase seine Figuren, zu denen auch eine mutige Magierin Sequara und eine uralte weise „Hexe“ gehört. Ich folge dem Autor schon lange auf Booktube, er betreibt einen Fantasy Review Kanal und so habe ich auch die Veröffentlichung seiner eigenen Fantasyreihe in den letzten Jahren beobachtet. Da nun alle 3 Teile veröffentlicht sind und dieses Jahr sogar ein weiteres Buch in diesem Universum erschienen ist, habe ich die Reihe gestartet und freue mich hier im Jahr 2026 noch so viel mehr zu entdecken. Dieses Buch war ein vielversprechender Start.
Reading has been very slow for me this year so far, and I am way behind my set goal for this year’s reading challenge. So at this time, I am already looking more into shorter stand-alone novels instead of going for the gran fantasy epics I love to read most of the time. Still, I am also infamously inconsistent when it comes to sticking to plans, so of course I had to sabotage myself and finally start reading Philip Chase’s Edan trilogy, just because one of his videos from his youtube channel kinda put me over the edge and instigated me to do it (so, well done, Sir). Just having finished the first part, The Way of Edan, and wanting to return to review the stuff I do more regularly anyways, this is as good a point a start as any, so let’s dive right into it. First thoughts first, I loved how the book immediately drew me into the brewing conflict right away and immediately pointed at what will probably be one of the central themes of the trilogy, in how organized religion can be abused to further worldly and church-related goals even by despicable deeds. And without wanting to go to deep into real-world comparisons, it’s probably no coincidence that the way of Edan is the one monotheistic religion in a world of polytheism being at the forefront of that behavior. Though just to clear that up, it also becomes clear very soon that this world is build on ages-long strife and conflict, so if you’re looking for innocence in this world, you probably won’t find any. So while I became a bit concerned with the first two scenes because of the brutality involved in it, I was immediately hooked and with the next scene, the author immediately soothed my fears by continuing with a very calm, peaceful scene, showing that the book wouldn’t be all grim and that there might be something to hope for. Even when that peace, of course, would be destroyed very soon. That scene also introduces our main character, Dayraven, a young warrior, growing up in peace and looking for a hopefully uneventful life, soon-to-be happily married with his beloved Ebba, whom he loves to tell tales from past events to (story-telling being another important topic throughout the whole novel). In this case, the tale of how the long-standing enmity between the kingdoms of Adanon and Caergilion came to pass, which is not only a beautiful way to build a world akin to what Tolkien did in his books, but which of course is also an important piece of information to better understand why events in the book can play out the way they do. The story really starts when Dayraven gets called to partake in a hunt for the monsters that have killed a shepherd’s young son, where he has a fateful encounter that not only changes his life forever, but also awakens a nearly limitless magical potential within him, turning him (unknowingly yet) into a central part of a world-wide game of power played by others and maybe even the Chosen one of an old prophecy. The fear of his folks created by this event forces him to leave his home; sent by his aunt and powerful sorceress Urd to another mage where he might find the education needed to control his new powers. Accompanied only by his trusted friend and bondsman Imharr, they set out to find Galdor, but of course things don’t turn out the way they are supposed to, and the two young man land exactly where Urd warned them not to go, enlistened in the army of Torrlond just setting out to conquer the neighboring kingdom of Adanon as the first step to complete world domination and destroying every other religion to make the Way of Edan the only way to follow. And while he is on his way into the thick of battle, gathering friends on the way, powerful people conspire to destroy him at the same time, others try to save him to use him for their own goals. There’s quite a few things to love about Philip Chase’s debut novel, especially if like me you grew up on devouring Tolkien and his world building. Like Tolkien, Chase uses tales from the past, ballads about historic events, and completely foreign-sounding languages to convey the sense of living in a different world to great effect. And I think that the author shares at least some of the sensibilities regarding the use of language with the linguistic genius Tolkien was, and that makes the read that much more enjoyable compared to a lot of other contemporary authors. At the same time he does world-building differently enough to not be considered a mere Tolkien-clone. There’s no greater evil power at work here like Morgoth/Sauron was (at least none I am aware of as yet), this is basically just what people can do to each other based on their believes and ideologies. And even the supposed bad guys, especially those of the religious sorts, all have their underlying worries and doubts that makes them at least understandable, even if it still is terribly fanatic and completely denying other people to decide for themselves. So far, the only complete villain is Torrlond’s King, who is all about power for himself, not wasting a single (even if flawed) thought about the greater good like Bledla and his fellow High Priests are capable of. On the other hand, the good guys aren’t thoroughly good though. Even Urd is totally willing to use Dayraven as a political pawn in a game he has no real idea about, and while, Sequara crown princess to the isle kingdom Asdralad and maybe the second most significant character in the sequels to follow is obviously torn between her sympathies for the people around her and what she considers as her political duty as future Mage-Queen, she still does mostly what she does for political reasons and while she will mourn the people dying for those reasons, she doesn’t really ask herself at least once if that’s a price worth paying (I may be overly harsh here, my own political convictions coming into play here). So while this world is still full of magic and wonders, it isn’t quite as far away from our reality than Middle-Earth is. And while there’s tons of brutality in the fight scenes making things even more realistic, it also isn’t completely grim and hopeless, which, at least to this reader, is a boon keeping me interested. I have already talked about some of the characters in the novel and that is another thing I quite liked about this book. Dayraven, Imharr, Sequara, Edan’s high priests, most of them have chapters or scenes where we can see things from their point of view, learning about their motivations and, in the end, making them human. And even with more side characters, there’s always little details turning them from archetypal figures into full-fledged characters. And again, Philip Chase makes great use of those details to build his setting by showing so as to avoid a huge backdrop of explanations onto the reader. There’s a few things I’d like to point out that I think could have been improved upon. I feel like there’s this tendency with modern authors to perfectly craft scenes to build the whole tale, where that loses the natural flow of things because the reader can see the construct behind it, and I think that’s also the case here. I already talked about the prologue scene, that I really liked but that still took me out of the story because it was so obvious how it was used to set things in motion (and also set up themes within the story). There’s also the scene when Imharr and Dayraven find themselves enlistened into the Torrlond army, that came pretty much out of nowhere, where it’s clear that it was done to get the characters into the position they need to be for the end of the novel. There’s also a few minor issues with pacing, that made the finale feel a bit rushed compared to the slower speed the story had till then. Made the final battle into a real page turner, and I was biting my nails because I wasn’t quite sure if Chase would pull the trigger on Dayraven, but on the other hand, there were so many things that needed to happen at the perfectly right moment to let things end the way they did, that I would have preferred a more natural, slower flow, even if that would have meant adding another 100 pages or so to the novel. Again minor nitpicks, and it didn’t really distract from my enjoyment of the novel. In fact, this is certainly one of the better debut novels I have read in recent years and I am completely in for the ride. I really love the language and the style of the book that, while clearly being oriented on the classics of the genre, is modern enough to appeal to readers way younger than me. A lot of the characters are written in an appealing way, and going back to Tolkien once more, as someone who loved how much importance he put on the topic of friendship between the members of the Fellowship, seeing Philip Chase doing the same thing with his group of heroes makes this into a very satisfying reading experience. Can’t wait to read more about Day, Imharr, Karan, Gorrn and Orvendil and even Abon (though that one is still a bit too mysterious to me, so we’ll see how that guy develops). I also already stated how much I really love the world building going on and the way it was done in this book. There’s that huge mystery still to be revealed, concerning that world’s elves and their connection/role to the systems of magic and religion, there’s the dweorg ( a really interesting spin on traditional dwarves whose culture I would really love to learn more about, and best of all, there’s this feeling of a living, breathing world at a really important crossroads regarding it’s history, and I really want to know how everything turns out and how that will change the world in the end. This said, I already came into this novel expecting to like it (based on what I learned about the author’s background and literary taste from his videos), and I am really glad to be able to say that this book didn’t disappoint at all. If you like Epic fantasy with a grim element with all the traditional elements from the classics but with very interesting spins on them, if you like character-driven stories still with a huge focus on world-building, this here might be for you. I don’t want to do too much namedropping especially regarding classics (already did that too much anyways), but there’s quite a few younger fantasy authors I came to appreciate in recent years (Mark Lawrence, Anthony Ryan, Robert Jackson Bennett, Jen Williams, just to name a few) and I already feel save adding Philip Chase to that list of authors to follow.