Priestess of War

By: Trevor H. Cooley

Narrated by: Andrew Tell

Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's Summary

Born of war and kept young only by the darkest of magic, the Dark Prophet's most powerful priestess has returned to the Trafalgan Mountains to take control of the Black Lake's mindless evil.

Now, with a growing army of the infested and dead under her power, she turns her gaze on Dremaldria.

Fist's chances of helping his former tribe destroy the Black Lake are bleak at best. The combined help of the Academy and the Mage School may not be enough to help him defeat the Priestess of War.

©2016 Trevor H. Cooley (P)2017 Trevor H. Cooley

It just keeps getting better!

It has been a blast since book 1 and the adventure never seems to end. Thank you for this story.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

love it

One of the best book i ever heard. Cant wait for the next book. Gretings from Sweden

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

much better than previous 3

Would you consider the audio edition of Priestess of War to be better than the print version?

I've gone through all the books in this series and was somewhat let down over the last three books. Fortunately, this one was back on track. Looking forward to the next one.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

it was good

but it could have been better expected him to go different ways but it was overall a good book much more entertaining than my other fantasy novels he wrote

Penultimate book — waiting for finale

Waiting for the last book to wrap up this series. I'm ready for it to be done, even though I've enjoyed it. I like the narration and the characters (most of them) but the battles feel repetitive and the villains are nearly identical in methodology. Does nobody stay dead? Plus, I'm weary of trolls, trollkins, behemoths, and troll slime. (But thulls are interesting.)

It's the characters — why I have stayed with this series. We see a lot of the ogre Fist in this book, and he's cool, but I especially care about the spiritually wounded ones, like poor Talon the humanized raptor, and the telepathic Gork in a dress, and the tortured elf Lyramoor, etc. Cooley handles them well. He manages to transform his characters over time. It feels fairly credible. I have even grown to accept Squirrel. And I adore Deathclaw.

Need to discover what happened to this world, long before these people lived, when the four prophets were selected. Is this possibly alternate Earth? Also, who is the 4th prophet, the woman? Who is the creator? Many characters claim they have no faith, and religious worship isn't a big part of the mythology, yet there is so much talk about free will, prophets, and a creator. This feels odd.

In all these books, nobody ever goes to sea. No ships are ever mentioned. Yet a coast is mentioned. What does this world look like? There is so much traveling. We need a map that shows all the lands, including Malaroo, Kalphany, etc. The maps provided at Cooley's website are incomplete.

The setting is further diminished by modern language. "Hey, big guy" and "major players" and "wee-wee, willy" etc. Plus, the ogre Fist advanced too quickly from broken English to a fairly consistent standard English with subject-verb agreement, academic transitions (however), etc.

So, I feel the world setting is still vague after 9 books and the plot relies too much on über-powerful black wizards who won't stay dead.

But despite this, I like some characters and plan to get the next book. Hopefully, it's the last I'll see of slimy trolls.

Ps. The storytelling quality has improved across the books. Cooley doesn't insert too much internal dialogue: reflection, rumination, worrying, regretting, repenting, etc (thank goodness). Pacing is good. Dialogue is not as wooden as it was.

Flawless narration.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful

Amazing book and great narrator!

Amazing series hope there is lots more to come. Please keep writing this amazing series.

more ogre goodness!

My Thoughts:
I’ve had a copy of this book in my phone for the longest time and resisting reading because I did not want to read it before Behemoth is released because I would want to dive into the next book as soon as I hit the cliffhanger ending of this book. Ten installments down the line, I know how the ending of the books in this series goes. But this time around we actually get some sort of a closure! Hurrah!! Some threads in the story arc are still hanging, of course, but we got an ending on one of the major plot lines! And I like that a lot. And the fact that I got to read on with the next book as soon as I hit the cliffhanger ending negated the cliffhanger-ending-syndrome depression. This is the best book yet in the series. But to get here you have to read through the previous books first because it would make more sense than jumping straight into this book without reading the previous books first. Do I love this book? Oh, yeah!! And I got to read a lot about my favourite ogre too! Kudos to this book!! So why does the book still not get a 5 out of 5 then? Because it still ended in a cliffhanger ending.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4
Writing Style = 4
Ending = 4.5
World building = 5
Cover art = 3.5
Pace = 3
Plot = 4
Narration = 5

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5