The mountain stood before him, and he stood before the mountain. They were alike in many regards, the mountain and the man, it broad at its base with crags rising up along its ridges, he broad at the shoulders with muscles growing like rugged hills along his arms. Even their heads were similar, his pale and bare beneath the morning sun, the mountain’s encrusted with the white of snow. Glints of bronze and steel winked where his sword hung on his back and an armless chain shirt enveloped his chest; the mountain, too, spotted sparks of brightness, these from the morning dew resting high along its peaks and even higher among ice and snow.
I recommended another book by Ty Johnston in June. Bayne's Climb is set in the same world as City of Rogues, though it takes place centuries earlier. It's also a very different sort of storytelling, though it is built on the same foundation of heroic adventure on an epic scale.
In the Kobalos trilogy Johnston demonstrated that he can tell a solid, exciting, suspenseful story. Now he has written a new trilogy, and he is exploring new ground as a writer. The Sword of Bayne trilogy is, on the face of it, a straightforward tale of high adventure. A soldier wakes up on a battlefield with no memory of his own identity. Soon he is trekking up the side of a mountain to face a powerful sorcerer who may hold the answers, if Bayne can just survive the meeting.
There is a lot more to it, though. Johnston is trying new things. In the Sword of Bayne novels he experiments with allegory and literary writing. Mixed in with the practical problems of a swordsman on a mission are deeper issues of identity and existence. Don't worry, it's still a two-fisted tale of heroic fantasy. There is, however, a poetic, lyrical feel to the prose.
Take a fascinating glimpse at the process of a pulp-style writer growing as an artist and learning to create something that is beautiful as well as exciting. These are shorter books, novellas or short novels. At $.99 Bayne's Climb is more than worth the price.
Read Bayne's Climb
Brent, glad you liked the book and could tell I was trying to stretch my boundaries as a writer.
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