“Exciting, captivating and fantastic. These three words probably describe the book best. I only read the first few sentences and was already caught in a new and strange world. Every single scene comes to life in front of me! A great opportunity to escape the real world.”
— R. Schifferle, Switzerland
“Over the years I have picked up many “Epic Fantasy” tales with high hopes and soon found myself tossing them aside: disappointed in tired tropes cribbed from more masterful authors; annoyed by two-dimensional world-building and borrowed cultures; bored with their thematic repetitions. “Epic Fantasy” has become an overused label and lost its uniqueness; its characters have become virtually interchangeable with any number of standardized heroes and villains.
Palanshia, however, is different. This world and its ethos are truly unique – there is no imitation here. Chancellor’s characters seem to grow up out of their various cultures in a manner that is virtually organic. You can smell the sea breeze; you can touch the orchids; you can hear the songs. Furthermore, the whole tale deals with a greater type of redemption than any standard ‘hero’s journey’ story because its aim is to ultimately liberate a whole world.”
— R.T.Hamrick, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
“Chancellor’s first fantasy novel is a good one. Its strength lies in the author’s unwavering commitment to the most basic and essential element in all of fiction: Giving readers carefully-wrought characters whose hopes, dreams, desires, and fears mirror their own. In short, Chancellor gives us characters we care about, characters who ring true. He sweats their details down to the smallest idiosyncrasies, makes certain that he gets their quietest moments right before wowing us with their grandest hours of daring. And it’s because of how deeply vested we become in these people who occupy Palanshia’s patiently and beautifully constructed universe that the story’s inevitable scenes of epic adventure and heightened dramatic tension actually come to mean so much more to us in the end, because there’s something there that’s more than mere deus ex machina. It’s something measured, powerful, and deeply satisfying emotionally, the kind of fulfilment that can come about by one way only...from having been earned.”
— Doug Waugh, Adjunct English Professor, Ohio University
