![]() ![]() I just want other potential listeners to know that it may take some getting used to early on. ![]() I will admit that Daisy's heavier cockney accent made it difficult for me to understand for the first chapter or so, but damn if she isn't the best for this job. All of this brought to vivid life by narrator Daisy May. She is now one of my favorite characters of all time. Seven Blades in Black does exactly that, by starting with a very simple one: "What if we mashed together Kill Bill, Trigun, and Final Fantasy? Wouldn't that just take the piss?" Sal the Cacophony's story is one immediately familiar thanks to riffing on these concepts, but through Sam's excellent world building and understanding of character becomes one very much her own. Something I think writers of both the aforementioned types of fantasy would do well to reexamine. And perhaps most importantly, an eagerness to ask, "What if?" purely for the fun of it. Sam's work reliably focuses on three things: characters with deep personal problems. Neither does he play to the supertrend of GRIMDARK, begging to outdo the tragedies of Martin or Abercrombie. Sam is an author who I consider to be part of a newer wave in fantasy - he doesn't play to the cliché of Tolkienesque elves and dwarves, of not-so-subtle colonialism that has echoed through the genre for decades. ![]() There's a small, greedy part of me that wants to never tell a soul about Sam Sykes, because I want to use all his ideas in my DnD campaigns. Perfect Blend of Rule-of-Cool and Character Study ![]()
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