Curse of the Chosen

The Endarian Prophecy, Book 3

By: Richard Phillips

Narrated by: Caitlin Davies

Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's Summary

The fight against primordial evil continues, and the stakes have never been higher...

Kragan, wielder of dark magic, has failed to vanquish the light in Lorness Carol Rafel, the woman prophesied to destroy him. Now Kragan has leveled a new threat against her: an unholy order of foul priests enlisted to storm her stronghold and destroy her and her companions once and for all.

Lorness Carol is waiting.

In the valley of Misty Hollow, she's finally conquered her fear of her magic. She has awakened a new power within her: the ability to manipulate minds. But even Carol is unprepared for where this new battle will take her.

For her brother, Lord Alan, is unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy as well. As the Chosen of the Dread Lord, he is amassing an army of feared soldiers - a battalion that could save the world, or pitch his sister's legacy into everlasting darkness.

©2018 Richard Phillips (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

Worth the wait

This series grew on me as it developed. If you’ve read Phillips’s Rho series you’ll appreciate the level of detail applied here in a fantasy setting. Reminded me of a better version of some of those D&D campaigns done in my youth. Engaging and well read audible...recommended!

Cursed for Having Chosen to Listen

In praising Richard Phillips's Meridian Ascent, the conclusion to his Rho Agenda trilogy of trilogies, I commended him on how he crafted a series of necessary action sequences that were credible, creative, and relevant. Indeed, once in a big way in the first entry in this Endarian Prophecy series and several times in a smaller way in volume two, there were set action pieces that were likewise inventive as well as helping develop character and build this world.

No such cleverness, creativity, or credibility can be ascribed to Curse of the Chosen, which in fact is one long endless series of battles. They are tedious, interminable, non-sensical, and just no fun at all. The body count is astronomical without any rationale. Worst of all, the worst adjective I can award an action sequence -- they are wholly gratuitous.

Even in a fantasy world of powerful magic, Occam's Razor must still apply. The most obvious explanation is always the most obvious explanation. If an enemy has magic that a) can slow down your time and speed up their time so that they can slaughter you with ease, and b) can suck the very life out of you and use it to revive any of their own casualties, why would you ever attack them? How can a writer expect us to believe that magical power b) would never be invoked in fighting you?

And if you had the magical ability to a) read your opponents' minds and b) implant thoughts in those minds, why would you not figure out what how they intend to attack you and inform your own leaders, and b) telepathically convince them to not attack you or to attack you ineffectively? Such is Curse of the Chosen, where these powerful forms of magic do not deter everyone from hacking each other to pieces with sharp and pointy pieces of metal.

Those are hardly my only complaints, only the important ones. I can find no positives other than to hold the narrator's competent reading blameless. The first entry in this series was disappointing to an avid fan of Phillips's science fiction. The second was maddening, badly written in the rush to get it out. This third entry is outright infuriating. The fourth (there will be a fourth) will be unread by me -- the only reason I continued on with this one was with the hope that Phillips would pull a rabbit out of his hat. Sadly, the rabbit is a bloody mess, dead on arrival.

love it

awesome story. great audio performance. I can hardly wait for next book to be released..

couldn't put it down

I was so caught up in the drama, I hope there is more to come.

Great story, but...

Great story, but the performer seems robotic. That's it, but a review apparently requires 15 words.