Book Review: The Ale Boy's Feast

The Ale Boy's Feast by Jeffrey Overstreet  

Paperback

383 pages

Categories: Fiction, Fantasy

ISBN: 978-1-4000-7468-6

Retail: $14.99

Publisher WaterBrook Multnomah

Also available as an ebook for Kindle, Nook and others.

Read an excerpt of this book here. Or read the entire first chapter here.

"The King is missing. His people are trapped as the woods turn deadly. Underground, the boy called Rescue has found an escape."

This is the 4th book of the Auralia's Thread series. It is dark in places (you actually can feel the despair and despondency as you read) but at the same time it is interwoven with hope and color- literally. The Auralia's thread is found interspersed throughout this book. It is definitely a book of fantasy. The words of this book are wonderfully descriptive.

Without having read the first three books in this series, I've no real idea what is going on in this story. It is not a book that you can pick up and feel comfortable that you've not missed something if you didn't read the previous books. I am on chapter 6.... I decided to write my review now because it is taking a while to read this book and I do not know when I will get it done.

The book is great so far. It is exciting and so captivating. I truly love the writing by Overstreet and am tempted to find the other books at the library to read before completing this one. Here is an example of his writing (and this is near the beginning):

The muskgrazers, shaggy as haystacks, ignored the whirlwinds. They hung their hairy heads and thrust curly, sinuous tongues into the grit, probing for burrow-birds and redthistle bulbs. After the dust phantoms passed, the cattle shook clouds of debris from their golden hair.

There are a lot of characters in this book- and almost all with odd names. The city names are also odd, going right along with fantasy writing. The number of people and places mentioned in the beginning especially is confusing and I've yet to get them all sorted. In spite of the confusion I do like this book and am going to look for the others.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

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