Threat, the first book in The City of the Magicians series, reveals all the preparations for a barbarian arrival, but when strategies collide, will anyone be ready? Will anyone be safe?
Welcome to one of the July 8th stops on the blog tour for Threat by Peter Gribble with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for more reviews and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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About the Book
Threat
The City of the Magicians Book One
by Peter Gribble
Published 18 November 2020
Tellwell Talent
Genre: Fantasy
Page Count: 314
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
“A Journey Without Departure” is the traditional term for a telepathic sending. It is a talent few can perform yet this is the strategy the City of the Magicians—non-violent pacifists, without army or weapons—hopes will mitigate the barbarian invasion coming in six months. The plan could work, but then maybe not. Sas, the young man chosen to “educate the barbarian,” can only think, Me? Sendings? They’ve made a mistake!
Lalya, a City librarian searching for her dead lover’s vanished manuscript, is ensnared by a secret society planning to collaborate with the same barbarians. Attempts to extricate herself from the blackmail, double-dealing, seduction and betrayal force her to realize her final treachery could very well destroy her.
Shoan, the Council strategist, is fully aware a shadowy opposition lurks behind the scenes but is stymied how to lure it out into the open. He should remember one of the basic axioms of tactics is, “Methodology is seldom prepared for surprises.”
Both Sas and Lalya are pawns in the strategies of others… yet it only takes a pawn to change the game.
Threat, the first book in The City of the Magicians series, reveals all the preparations for a barbarian arrival, but when strategies collide, will anyone be ready? Will anyone be safe?
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Excerpt
“Approach and be attentive!” intoned the priest and priestess choruses. “All existent worlds bubble from the froth and foam, but the loving ocean of the One is the ultimate reality …”
Attentiveness, devoted reflection or his stance of solemn focus which, on less eventful days, disguised the reveries he slipped into … Impossible.
There was no warning this morning’s meeting would be so …
The Council expects me, Sas, to educate the barbarian invasion?
Because of citations for talent under Adjudicator Kesrin? With telepathic sendings? Something’s wrong. Why am I here? The Temple’s not the best place to think. What a quandary! And I’m the solution to it? They’ve made a mistake! Sendings means they expect more than one. From me? I’m no telepath! It makes no sense!
A young priestess moving to the center altar fount drew his eye.
She’s got the good voice but never recites anything interesting from the Liturgia. To think I might’ve been stuck up there, a lector reciting to the assembled … the Family wanted it; Adjudicators expected it. Competition with Sirna demanded it. Could’ve had any position in the Bureautica but, thank the One, never that! But educating barbarians with sendings?
My Review
My Rating: 3.5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐🌓
I was granted complimentary access to an eBook copy of Threat by Peter Gribble as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Goddess Fish Promotions. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.
Threat is the first book in the The City of the Magicians series and as such is an introduction to the world, the cast, and the overarching plot. This is a city ruled by those who practice magic, but everything is divided. Five schools of thought on magic and how to rule rose up, but by the time our story starts, only four remain. What happened to the fifth? A few unlikely characters are about to discover that it still exists, thriving underground in the manner of a secret society that leaves no disloyal witnesses alive.
I love the cast of characters Gribble has established in his world and their crisscrossing storylines. It definitely held my attention to the very end! Layla was my favourite, as I enjoyed her fearless tenacity and drive to solve the mystery of what happened to the person she loves most in the world and what it all has to do with this fifth school.
I have a critiques to offer, however, and I’ll start with a minor quibble I have with several fantasy authors and their choices, not just this one: Inventing or re-defining words for mundane things just to make the world feel different. For example, glyphs are used in this world. Fine, great, cool. But glyph is also a verb. “I’ll glyph it later.” Not I’ll write it later. Not I’ll draw it later. I’ll “glyph” it later. This doesn’t make the world cooler. It breaks the spell of this world and reminds me that I’m reading something dreamed up by an author who wants me to know that this isn’t taking place in my world.
Besides this my critiques are of the formatting choices. I received both PDF and epub copies, and neither got a long well with screen reading options. I prefer to listen to eBooks so that I can keep my hands occupied, as I absorb the story better that way, but that became annoying very quickly with this book. This book is full of lengthy footnotes that caused me two major issues trying to consume the book via my preferred method. First, I didn’t realize for about 3 chapters that all of the exposition info dumps were footnotes and I wonder how this would be handled in an actual audiobook format. I was originally thinking I’d critique the author’s choice to tell instead of show, but it’s more forgivable in a footnote if you can choose to skip it. Second, particularly in the PDF format, the footnote notation caused my readers to jump back to the top of the page and read the same couple of paragraphs 2-3 times before escaping to the next page. Again, as I was trying to listen to the book, initially I thought I received a jumbled document with repeated pages. In short, this book in its current eBook formatting is not suited to being read with assistive technology, and that’s a problem.
About the Author
Peter Gribble studied art at Sheridan and psychology at U of T. He has written for NUVO and other publications in British Columbia, including gardening columns for two journals for over ten years.
Giveaway Alert!
Peter Gribble will award a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter.
a Rafflecopter giveaway| June 24 | Guatemala Paula Loves to Read | July 8 | Westveil Publishing |
| July 8 | Gina Rae Mitchell | July 15 | The Faerie Review |
| July 15 | Our Town Book Reviews | July 22 | fundinmental |
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We appreciate you hosting and reviewing Threat today.
This looks like a mighty fine read. Thanks for sharing.
Sounds great. The pin entry doesn’t seem to work.