Tower of the Forgotten

The Tainted Cabal Prequel Novella

By: Mitchell Hogan

Narrated by: Oliver Wyman

Length: 2 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's Summary

This is a stand-alone novella set before the events of Revenant Winds.

From Mitchell Hogan - Aurealis Award winner and author of the Sorcery Ascendant Sequence.

Niklaus, master swordsman, has not aged a day since being chosen by his mercurial goddess. A slave to her will, he moves from one cryptic mission to the next in the hope of ascending to become her equal.

But even a man who has lived for centuries can sometimes find himself out of his depth.

When Niklaus is sent to kill a sorcerer of the Tainted Cabal, overconfidence leads to a fatal mistake, and neither experience nor skill with a blade can prevail against the forces unleashed against him.

©2017 Mitchell Hogan (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

What's Next?

This could be good. How long do we have to wait to find out?

Really wets the appetite

Well I'm ready for the main course, this story was a wonderful appetizer for The Tainted Cabal series. I can see there will be my main ingredient for a good story, and that's interesting characters. Just enough here to spark an interest in Niklaus, (master swordsman and assassin for a mysterious goddess) and a side character to hopefully see again, Sly Diamond (yep, that's what he calls himself) the thief that added a touch of comic relief.
Assassins, thieves, demons, sorcerers, swordplay and goddesses. Looks to be a good start, and with the great narration of Oliver Wyman, you can't go wrong.

Interesting Prequel

As the start of Hogan's new series was released today I thought I would try this one to give me a taster. I've also listened to the first couple of hours of the new book. The author's debut series really did split opinions considerably. Primarily from what I saw and read most people really liked the world-building and clever magic system However, some of the characters, particularly the lead were for the want of a better term just a little "wet" with perhaps a little too much repetitive internal soul-searching going on.

The good news is that the early indications are that the world-building will be strong again and there's another clever-sounding but different magic system emerging. The even better news is that this time we aren't talking about a coming of age tale for Niklaus and Aldric at least. They appear strong and heavily seasoned men of many years. I'm excited that at this stage it looks as though Hogan has kept what was good about his writing and made good on what some saw as his weaker areas. It bodes really well.

This story follows Niklaus on a brief adventure which gives hints of much of the above and is satisfying enough in its own right. We get to understand his nature and relationship with his rather racy sounding God and get a flavour of this new world. Oliver Wyman is once again the man doing the voices and he is in fine form.

In short this is a satisfying enough short story that will give some interesting depth to one of the main characters in the series. If, not unreasonably, you are concerned at spending a full credit on such a short story I'm pretty sure it's not essential to enjoying the series itself.