When the Dark Lord rises blood will flow!
Prince of men, lord of light, and champion of the weak, Jacob’s immense physical strength is matched only by his great kindness. Until an animal rage awakens, and he is born anew. Reborn like a warrior of old. A hero with skill unparalleled and a god-given power.
He surrounds himself with loyal warriors, violent men with scarred faces and bloodied swords. When his true love is held prisoner by his sadistic uncle, nothing will stop his vengeance. He wades through the blood of friend and foe alike. He will murder men. He will slay orcs, goblins, and monsters far more horrific. But at the end, will he have the strength of heart to resist? Or will his actions bind him to the Darkness?
Title: The Banner of the Broken Orc
Author: Aiden L Turner
Subgenre: Dark epic fantasy
Pages: 483
Self-published: 2020
Tons of great fight scenes in a well-written dark epic fantasy.
I’ll try to keep the number of spoilers down, but in short, The Banner of the Broken Orc by Aiden L Turner is an epic fantasy story taking place in medieval-inspired lands. It’s well written, easy to get into, and it delivers on its initial promises.
Writing a huge epic fantasy novel, especially as one’s debut, takes bucket loads of discipline, time, and dedication. The British author Aiden L Turner, who now lives in the Netherlands, deserves a lot of credit for seeing this vast project through and making it all fit so well together into a fine epic tale.
The good stuff
In the prologue, the stakes are quickly and effectively laid out: an ancient evil has awakened from its long slumber. It hates all life and especially mankind, and if the good guys don’t grow into what they could become, it’s going to be game over for, well...everyone and everything.
I’m sure the fear of what could befall us all has crossed many minds recently with the war in Ukraine. At least the evil in the book has no nukes, but it does have the nasty ability to enter the minds of people and tempt them to do evil deeds. At the onset of the novel, the characters know nothing of that, but luckily, they have some good and wise older advisors like the priest Red Rob.
Despite a great number of main characters, and that it jumps around (like epic fantasy so often does,) I had no issue following the plot. I never once resented the jumps (as one so often does in larger epics.) Lots of praise to the author for accomplishing that.
As easy as the danger is to grasp for the reader, so is the plot, and the understanding of the world created by Mr. Turner. It sort of combines the peril-ridden jungles of Warhammer’s Old World with the at-odds nobility of the Game of Thrones, in a writing style that reminds me a bit of Raymond E. Feist. Don’t be surprised to find berserker goblins (who don’t love those?) out-of-this-world magic journeys, and a sadistic King who despises the peasants as much as he loves his too-huge throne.
For the true fans of dark fantasy out there, there’s also plenty of well-written, gory stuff like severed eyeballs hanging by a thread, rape, giant man-eating spiders, and beings getting dismembered, or ground to bits by horrible monsters with nasty breaths. Fans of such things will rejoice at all these “juicy bits.”
Much of the book takes place amongst the humans, either at the king’s castle of Sprettaman, the front, or in various villages where the toiling human peasants are beset by goblin and orc raiding parties. If you enjoy books about men of true heart, with a decent amount of blood and gore, and a focus on the martial side of things, you’ll feel right at home here, and if you outright love medieval-inspired fantasy, with lots of great-swords clutched in well-polished gauntlets and blood and gore, this should 100% be on your TBR list. I also think this will appeal to Warhammer fans.
Great fighting scenes
The best parts of the book for me were the fighting scenes and lucky for me, there’s plenty of fighting, and it’s all well written, well-structured, and easy to understand. If you love great fighting scenes, this book might just be your next thing!
Another nice thing was the slow-burning buildup to war, like the chapters where a revolt slowly ferments and then erupts amongst the subterranean desert elves. The worldbuilding is at its most interesting when he writes about the desert-dwelling elves.
A hit with the youngsters
The book takes us right into the heart of the orc lands and introduces us to their evil ways and their even more evil king. The green-skins live beyond the human lands on the far side of an enchanted forest which is insanely dangerous. So much so that it reminded me of a disastrous Warhammer tabletop campaign I once fought in the jungles of Lustria. The jungle killed most of my units and turned out to be much more of an adversary than any of the other player’s armies (who suffered similar casualties while the jungle laughed at us.)
From the land of the orc, we head further out to the desert-dwelling elves, and even to the very ends of the world where a sinister force lives, and then much further than you can imagine (no, I’m not going to spoil it, this is quite the adventure that Mr. Turner has created.)
As the book is well written, the plot easy to follow, and the author loves to share such gory details, I think this could be a great hit with the younger fantasy readers or new fantasy readers. My guess would be that a lot of teenage boys will absolutely relish it.
I really hope the talented Aiden L Turner writes a lot more books.
Nuances matter
However, after all this praise, there are also things I wished would have been different, especially three-four things (see below.) Had it not been for them, this could have been a raving review and changed an excellent book into a great one.
The hero: This might just be a personal taste thing for me, but I didn’t like Prince Jacob. Nor was I ever worried about whether he’d make it out alive. This is an issue, as he is the main character. Jacob is just too-good-to-be-true. I would have liked more nuance and flaws in his character, initially. While he did improve over the course of the book, the initial dislike was hard to shake, and I would gladly have accepted any sort of fix for this, for instance by changing Jacob into being more like his uncle the king. This would have made him believable, while less hero-like. Initially, this would make it difficult for the author to figure out how to turn Jacob into a hero, but the journey would have been a lot more interesting to follow, the sort of reluctant change into becoming a hero.
I actually liked all the other main characters better than Jacob, like the young elven chieftain Cameos, and Elysabeth, the clever and tough peasant girl. Perhaps because I was less sure of their fate and role. I also very much liked Colburn, who I could have used a chapter more about. He’s the sort of battle-hardened human champion you play in gritty first-person computer games.
Magic: Another issue of taste is that the book is based on a soft magic system, and I like hard magic better in epic fantasy where you have the pages to explain things. That said, the magic system didn’t bother me much, probably because the writing is so kick-ass good. However, the next things did...
The pacing: The book simply starts off too slow. I put it down several times, and it was harder getting back in each time. While it picks up the pace tremendously, and then really takes off, I think many readers might not make it to the good stuff. Which is sad. Writing my first book, I also spent too long in the first chapters describing stuff and ended up having to delete the beginning and replace it with more engaging scenes and more nuanced characters. This book would have been better with a similar harsh treatment.
Uniqueness: I’ve been a reader of fantasy for nearly 4 decades, but I still really wish to be surprised and enthralled. This has gotten more difficult over the years, I admit, but I struggled with finding stuff like that in The Banner of the Broken Orc. As an example, when we are introduced to a race of rat-people I was struggling not to think of them as Skaven, and then their ruler sits on a green glowing stone. I could have done without that. While all of us fantasy authors make use of such “common properties,” here it was a tad overdone, and the worst thing is that it would have been super easy to twist things a bit more to make them interesting while keeping the fantasy vibe alive.
Another example is the wicked king (his favorite pastime is to torture women) have rotten teeth and a weak body. His appearance mirrors his inside. While his nephew, the good lad Jacob with the kind soul, is much better looking and strong. Again, the outside mirrors the inside. I would have liked things to be a bit less fairytale-like and transparent. That said, it’s still a really good book.
Scores
Best features: The combat descriptions, which were easy to follow and engaging. And the writing.
Writing/prose: 9/10 (Very well-written)
Pacing: 7/10 (Starts slow but picks up the pace)
Plot: 7/10 (A hero’s journey sort of plot with twists)
Characters: 7/10 (I liked most of them)
Worldbuilding/setting: 7/10 (Easy to understand. Fits well together. I liked the elven lands)
Originality: 5/10 (Few surprises for the avid reader)
Overall score: 7/10 (4-stars)
