Not Recommended. There is a lot to say about Forging the Darksword, but it would be impossibly to start anywhere but how utterly, unashamedly ridiculous and nonsensical the world is. Forging the Darksword feels like it's set in a Parody world, except neither the book nor the authors realize it. Being a Typical Fantasy Novel, Magic exists, and is split into several arts - There are the Stone-shapers who can form stone into any shape, the Field Magi who tend to agriculture, the weather Magi that make it rain, snow, or shine - so far, so generic. And then there is Dark Magic, the Dark Arts - Also known as 'Technology,' whose dark sorcerers cast their spells in a strange language, known as 'Mathematics.' What? As far as themes go, Magic Versus technology is a pretty common one, but this book takes Clarke's Third law a step too far by claiming technology is Dark magic, indistinguishable from the casting of fireballs. Technology is a forbidden art because it involves imparting 'Life' - magic - to that which does not innately have it, which is somehow different from stone-shapers moving and molding rocks, but it's not explained how. For me, this 'Technology is literally a Forbidden dark art' is a little vague and too far gone for me, but I was interested to see just how far it goes -- and oh, Forging the Darksword does not disappoint! At one point a character uses a stick as a lever to facilitate moving a rock, and everyone looks on in horror -- the Dark Arts! A character throw's a stone, a deviant Dark Magic spell! A godly priest shudders at seeing a wicket dark sorcerer engaged in the dark arts... laying bricks with cement. It is absolutely farcical. To be honest, the majority of my enjoyment through the first third of the book was mocking intrigue, just to see exactly how farcical this rabbit-hole of 'Technology is actually dark magic' would go, and it's a good thing the mocking was carrying me along, since there wasn't much else to. In typical fantasy style, Forging the Darksword is paragraph and paragraph of exposition, long, detailed histories of the world forced in at every opportunity. It's filled to the brim with the typical fantasy cohort of unpronounceable invented names and words that all blend together and become meaningless gibberish. All in all, the entire first book reads like a prologue to a bigger story, and the first 2/3rds of the book read like a prologue to a prologue , and don't get me started on the explicit prologue itself. By my honest accounting, the actual plot doesn't start until 300 pages in, of the 390-something page book! Maybe around page 200 if you want to be generous and have a less strict definition of 'plot' than I do. And yet looking back, I found I genuinely enjoyed it in the end. Somewhere a long the way I fell in with the plot, engaged with the characters, and let the hilariously inconsistent and absurd magical worldbuilding behind and enjoyed myself. It's not 'Good,' in fact it's thoroughly generic, aside from the magical absurdities, but once I got past the encyclopedic exposition and the characters began to come to life, I let myself get carries along with the narrative. I wouldn't recommend Forging the Darksword, and I will not be reading the Sequel, but I can't say I regret reading it, Either. Perhaps it's a Sunk-cost fallacy.