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Hero Forged: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Ethereal Earth Book 1) Kindle Edition
He thought he'd covered all the angles, but it’s tough to plan for accidentally trapping an evil god in your brain.
Gabriel Delling might call himself a professional con artist, but when walking superstitions start trying to bite his face off, his charm is shockingly unhelpful. It turns out living nightmares almost never appreciate a good joke. Together with a succubus trapped into protecting him, he desperately tries to survive a new reality that suddenly features demons, legends, and a giant locust named Dale—all of whom pretty much hate his guts. And when an ancient horror comes hunting for the spirit locked in his head, Gabe finds himself faced with the excruciating choice between death...or becoming some kind of freaking hero.Hero Forged is the first book in the new series Ethereal Earth, a modern fantasy adventure that challenges the natures of myth, humanity, and what it means to be the good guy.
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJune 2, 2018
- File size1793 KB
From the Publisher
The Ethereal Earth Series
Follow Gabe, Heather, and a whole cast of dangerous and intriguing characters as they reluctantly try to save the freaking universe in this ongoing story about reality, illusions, and all the ridiculous crap in the gray space between.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Looks like I've got a new author to add to my personal pantheon of fantasy favourites! - Bookshine and Readbows
Hero Forged is one of those just-another-chapter books, and if you do manage to put it down, you want to get back to it as soon as you can. It's action-packed, creatively imagined, and one of the most genuinely funny books I've read in ages, with real heart lightly hidden beneath the humour. - Fantasy Book Review
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B07CZ51BXD
- Publisher : (June 2, 2018)
- Publication date : June 2, 2018
- Language : English
- File size : 1793 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 442 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #129,314 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #449 in Metaphysical Fantasy eBooks
- #673 in Humorous Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- #1,434 in Dark Fantasy Horror
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Josh Erikson doesn't have any fancy credentials to tell you about here. He lives in rural Nebraska (US) with his wife and two children, where he mostly reads, writes, and reads about writing. His many awards and accolades include some beautiful certificates he printed at home, and a yo-yo trick contest he once won at a fun fair in a grocery store parking lot.
Customer reviews
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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I didn’t read the blurb so I didn’t know what I was getting into with this one, so all of it came as a pleasant surprise.
Set in modern day, Gabe is a good hearted con artist, he’s past his college years but not by too much (I don’t remember a specific age given) and is a loner by choice, sort of. Relationships become complicated and don’t last long when one partner is out conning people as various personas he’s made up over the years. He has the ability to almost become someone else when he puts on his con act, it’s lead him to develop social reflexes that get him out of dangerous situations. He’s able to read people and know when he’s being played and is an excellent negotiator. Overall, he’s an easy character to like with a charm to him.
Gabe went with a group of cohorts for a ‘job’, but it went horribly wrong. Gabe finds himself in the middle of a sacrificial ritual performed by one of the Umbra known as Gwendyl. He can’t wrap his head around it and he refuses to believe what he’s seeing. Magic isn’t a thing in this world, his world is just like the ‘normal world’ with no hint of supernatural anything. He watches as one by one his ‘friends’ throats are slit, and then raise back up – except they aren’t his friends anymore, they’ve been altered. The rest of the group have been possessed by the Umbra and are now subservient to Gwendyl.
Gwendyl has been trapped in the Ether, or the ocean of life and creation that reality sits inside, it’s a lonely boring place with no real boundaries or timescale. She’s managed to come back to Earth for the first time in 500 years and is under the impression the world is in danger. She believes that forces greater than her own are determined to annihilate all life on Earth, and only she and her husband can ‘save’ the world…. by enslaving it. I kind of liked the take on lesser evils vs greater evils and the twisted ways villains can see themselves as heroes. She is preying on humanity, killing them and stealing their life’s essence, and raising people from the dead newly possessed with more Umbra. She wants Gabe’s body to be her husband’s new vessel, who is still trapped in the Ether. When she gets to Gabe and performs the ritual, however, Gabe is able to push out the Umbra spirit… almost. After the ritual, Gabe is linked to her husband, but not possessed by him, but she didn’t know that at the time. With quick thinking, Gabe is able to talk his way out of her presence and starts to head back home. There’s a complication though, during the ritual he becomes bound to a succubus.
Heather was once one of his cohorts, one he was being kind of flirty with, actually. Now she’s risen again in front of his eyes and telling him that she’s bound to him for life. She’s essentially enslaved – she must always tell him the truth, and protect him from harm at all costs. She doesn’t want that though, she wants to be free. They strike a deal that he will try and learn how to set her free, the problem is he has no magical ability, and to break the bond requires magic on his end. While they figure that out she fills him in on the world he never knew existed, and tries to help him rid himself of the husband Umbra, Acamana. Acamana, is an ancient and powerful entity, more akin to a god than a minor demoness like Heather. He’s known as the god of lies, deception, and evil, not exactly something you want hanging around your brain. The problem is, they have no idea how to sever the link, and no one else seems to either. All the while, Gwenlyn is super pissed off and sending demons and monsters after the two of them leading to a lot of mayhem.
I liked Gabe, he was easy to relate to, he was smart and at times funny. Sometimes I was annoyed at how long it took him to accept what was happening around him, although I don’t know how much better I would be doing in similar circumstances. He has a lot of loyalty when he’s invested in a person, despite his dad being a jerk, Gabe still takes care of him now that he’s disabled and unable to care for himself. Even though there’s a lot of danger all around him, he’s reluctant to run to a different city because he doesn’t know what would happen to his dad. He also develops a complex relationship with Heather, whom he doesn’t trust much considering she’s a demon – but she’s so atypical for what one would expect a demon to be, he can’t help but become attached. There are many instances where running away would have been the ‘smarter’ choice, but he stuck around to help Heather out of some deep crap at risk to himself.
I really liked Heather, she was a character that just kept getting more layers as the book went on. She’s a succubus, so naturally, she’s a little flirty and uses sex appeal to get her way. Books with a lot of male gaze annoys the crap out of me, so the fact that this one pulled off a succubus without being laced with male gaze is awesome. Instead of talk of boobs and butt, she is often described in scent, (perfume, vanilla, flowers) or visual images that have meaning to the main character, like the place where he had his first kiss. She’s simply described as beautiful beyond comprehension and having a hypnotizing magical force rather than focusing on descriptions of her physical attributes. She has no ill intent either, for being a succubus she’s a pretty laid back gal, all she really wants in life is to eat good food, drink good drinks, and have a lot of sex. She is a succubus after all.
There were all sorts of magical elements in this book, gods, demons, vampires, hobgoblins, Hell Hounds etc. It was introduced slowly at first though, it was just the Umbra and the Ether in the beginning and then everything else was added in slowly. Umbras have been around since before written history but they’ve been concealed through powerful glamours allowing them to blend into society unnoticed. They can come in all shapes and sizes and rely greatly on collective human belief. The more an Umbra is worshipped and thought about, the more powerful they can become.
The writing in this was pretty solid, and it came through very well in the audiobook. I really think this is one of those books that would read better as an audio because of the emotions and voices cast to the characters, it was all well done. The pacing was even and consistent with a tension that built up slowly through the book. The world building expanded when it needed to, but without a lot of info dumps and there were alternating periods of downtime and action scenes. This had an overall lighter tone, despite all the doomsday threats going on the main character was a very ‘light’ as was Heather which balanced things out.
Audience:
For people who like:
Con artist characters
easy to like characters
urban fantasy
audiobooks
vampires, succubus, Hell Hounds, gods
action scenes
lighter in tone
Not for people
who don’t like cursing
Ratings:
Plot: 12.5/15
Characters: 12.5/15
World Building: 13/15
Writing: 12/15
Pacing: 12.5/15
Originality: 12.5/15
Personal Enjoyment: 9/10
Final Score: 84/100
There is a lot to like in this book, and that starts with our main character, Gabriel Delling. Gabe is your typical somewhat cocksure, snarky con man. He reminds me a little of a younger Nate Ford from Leverage—just with a demon god trapped in his head. In any case, Erikson easily avoids falling into tired tropes here. The character of Gabe sets him apart and makes the reader want to keep reading because you identify with some of his motivations or—at other times—because you’re truly curious to know if Gabe is going to make it. The side characters, while not as well developed as Gabe, are still a strength of the novel. The pacing was excellent throughout the bulk of the novel, and I felt Erikson sprinkled just enough glimpses of the larger world and what was going on behind the scenes to tantalize without allowing the story to become bogged down or become confusing to the reader. Well done all around.
For me, the end game pacing felt off. The rest of the novel felt so perfectly paced that it was jarring to get to the end game and feel like we entered one end game, only to then enter another, only to then find ourselves in a third. It was, perhaps, drawn out slightly too much. Perhaps another way of saying it is that Erikson had a number of threads to pull together and it may have just taken him two chapters too many to do so. This is not a complaint that these ending chapters amount to an extended epilogue (see The Lord of the Rings), but rather that the pacing just didn’t seem quite right for the final 15% of the novel. In addition to this, on occasion it felt like Gabe sometimes picked up a new ability without much explanation to how the magic worked. I hope to see more exploration of the magic system in future novels set in this world.
Hero Forged is a wonderfully unique, humorous, pulse-pounding adventure that you shouldn’t miss. I’m definitely looking forward to the next book in the series and I’m glad that I took a “risk” on reading an urban fantasy, Josh Erikson has made me a believer. 4.3/5 stars.
5 – I loved this, couldn’t put it down, move it to the top of your TBR pile
4 – I really enjoyed this, add it to the TBR pile
3 – It was ok, depending on your preferences it may be worth your time
2 – I didn’t like this book, it has significant flaws and I can’t recommend it
1 – I loathe this book with a most loathsome loathing
Top reviews from other countries
Hero Forged was definitely one of those books. The moment I got it, I couldn't put it down. Josh Erikson is a true writer - his descriptive details and dialogue is truly fantastic and realistic, as well as fun and dangerous at the same time.
The characters are ace - they draw you in and make you believe they are real people. Gabe is totally an addictive character - you just want to see what comes out of his mouth next, he is brilliant.
I am so picky about books, as an aspiring writer myself I find it hard to find books I enjoy that meet the standards I set myself. But this book definitely did that for me.
Character = truly brilliant
Storyline = driven and focused
The writing = I couldn't ask for better
If you're into urban fantasy with humour, darkness, and likeable, sexy characters, then Hero Forged is for you. I can't rate this book enough.
Well done Josh Erikson - you're definitely one of my favourite authors of all time now!
Many obvious plot devices and a character redemption arc for a character who did not need much redeeming. Characters are well written but without a whole lot of depth. Picked this up for something light to read so not sure how much I can complain about depth.
My 2 favorite parts of this book;
Fantastic chapter intros/interludes
Clever elementary deduction a la Sherlock
What I wanted to see more of (hope to see in the next installment);
More use of Gabe's alternate personas. There was a lot of buildup to this skill, it played it's part in the main plot and was infrequently mentioned again.
More cons like at the coffee shop! Love that scene.
More character development for major secondary characters
Mr. Erikson wrote a cool story and I'm glad I took the time to read it. Thank you