Kingfall (The Kingfall Histories) Paperback – July 14, 2021

These storylines are intriguing and the skill with which they are presented is superb. I am so happy to have discovered this author and look forward to many long hours of pure pleasure visualizing the wonderful word portraits he provides.

As a general rule the book is quite good. Taking place in a seemingly standard fantasy setting, it nonetheless possesses more than a few native quirks to make it stand out. Characters are compelling and the world building is steady and consistent. However, the book also has low points, such as hit-or-miss humor that often seems misplaced (a man goes from suicidal hysteria at the deaths of his family to “I’ll take one of those if you’re handing them out) as well as the occasional easily guessed plot point, though this did nothing to keep me reading for a full day solid.Not a perfect book but more than good enough for anyone looking for a good old-fashioned door stopper to keep them entertained.

I decided to take a break from my usual affair of LitRPG, Portal, Cultivation, System books. Those books are usually straightforward reads, with characters in situations that are never that taxing. Kingfall is none of those things.Coming away from this first book in the series, I can say it might end up being a bit too dark for my own tastes, but that isn't a knock against it. David Estes is a phenomenal author and I was thoroughly impressed with the cast of characters he is building up here; each of which has a distinctly different personality, wants, and weaknesses.You will spend the entirety of this book jumping from one character to the next -- generally each character gets 1-2 chapters and then it switches. PoV switches are generally a pet peeve of mine (I like my stories to be told from 1 character's view 90% of the time) but I find it less problematic as long as an author starts out the story doing it, which Estes did here -- so +1. I personally gravitated toward liking one or two characters in those story, but I don't think any one character is particularly worse than the other. Fyre's POV/story might be the most "contrived"/weak of the bunch, but that's only my opinion and I expect it might get better in coming books.Personally, I was blown away with Helm's story so far. I didn't expect much from his story since it seems like it might be the most "mundane" of the batch (right now?), but his character/personality/soul plus his circumstances were thought provoking, inspiring, and heart wrenching. My hat is off to the author for what he's done with this character so far.Speaking more generally about the characters. I definitely get the feeling here in Book 1 that we're going to see this cast constantly jumping around in morally grey areas. I definitely don't get the feeling that any one particular character is somehow the "Paladin of Good/Righteousness" or something like that. There are a lot of "not-good/great" (morally) characters in this world, but that's what you should expect in dark fantasy.Setting-wise I think all I can say right now is that its interesting -- not boring. It check's some set of unknown boxes that get me excited when I read fantasy and stokes my curiosity to learn more about the world. Also, catching glimpses of other parts of the world that probably will only be explored in Estes' other series set in the same world, is always a nice touch in my eyes.If you like darker fantasy stories, then I would definitely give Kingfall a shot.

Until recently I wasn't much of a fantasy fan. Mostly I was into hard science fiction. But almost by accident I was introduced to the work of Michael Sullivan and fell in love with the narrator of his books, Tim Gerard Reynolds. So I started looking for other audio books he had read, and came upon Kingfall. It had it all: dastardly villains, tragic heroes, beautiful princesses, plucky children, strange creatures and magic, Magic, MAGIC! I confess, I was hooked! I was consumed by Kingfall and went on to read the next three books in the series. Well, almost. I'm stuck about three quarters of the way through the fourth book. Somehow I just don't care about dragons or demons or mages anymore. But this, the first book, was terrific, and many people will tell you the rest in the series are, too. So try it. It was fun while it lasted and you get to listen to Tim Gerard Reynolds.

I’m enjoying this series so far. It honestly took me a few chapters to get into the story but it balances between a lot of interesting sub-stories. As a female reader, I at first thought this was a book more geared for guys due to the writing style and certain elements the story focuses on. However, I’m pleased to find that the story opened up in ways that many female readers will enjoy. There are also a lot of interesting and unique fantasy elements about weapons, creatures, races of people who populate the earth, rituals, etc. that I haven’t seen in other books. I would say some elements are pretty dark and graphic—so be prepared for that—but other lighter parts will always come along to balance out the story. I can’t wait to start the next book!

I Liked the writing style very much. What’s not to like dragons dragons and more dragons….. very interesting take on old themes I enjoyed it

There's a lot to like in this book but it's let down by the author trying to juggle too many balls! There are already a myriad of characters so to have another "dump" of more at the 50% stage just seems a bit much, not to mention that the book actually ends at 80%! There appears to be another 4 in the Series but being perfectly honest I'm not sure I care enough to keep going & reading the synopsis of each, there's more characters to come! The author has this annoying thing of starting a sentence with "Void" when he wants to story to change direction...why? You also wonder what age this is aimed at, I'm mean we have a Wizard (who actually hasn't been in it much so far) named Grim Fire & the baddie from years ago was called Mirg Erif...I mean really!I could quite happily followed Ando,Peony & Sampson but then we have Griz,Mrz,Aisling,Amari,Jarrod,Dale & still yet more to come!If I could I'd probably just look at the ending of book 5.