- Title:
- Heliotrope
- Author:
- Palmer Pickering
- Release:
- November 23, 202
- Format:
- Audiobook
This is my kind of fantasy. It goes into excessive levels of detail for every scene. If the characters are riding horses to get somewhere, the book doesn’t just tell you they rode and got there, it tells you which horse each character was on, what they were wearing, etc.
It leads to every location feeling like a real place. The animals are as alive as the locations and the people are. Unlike characters in far too many books, characters in Heliotrope are actually interesting and compelling. The level of detail leads to them being fleshed out and not cardboard cutouts, like every other book.
The details did get amusingly obnoxious at times though. When the characters were trading for goods with some sheep herders, I half expected there to be a math problem asking me how many resources they had left. The excessive details do slow down the novel greatly. You need to be a fast reader or very patient if you’re going to read Heliotrope as it’s not in a hurry to go anywhere.
While the story does feature magic, it’s really more of a background plot element. The story focuses much more on the character as they’re struggling to make a living in a world that keeps kicking stools out from under them.
I enjoyed reading Heliotrope, it felt like returning to a friend each day, hearing a bit more of their tale as it unravels. I did realize though, I will likely never read this book again. At 100 pages a day, it would take me another 8 days to revisit it, and I just don’t see myself having the time for it. I don’t know if Heliotrope is going to be part of a series, if it is, the only way I’d be able to catch back up is if an audiobook is released.
Heliotrope is for people who want fantasy without overbearing magic or fantastical animals. It’s a somewhat grounded-in-reality fantasy story. I wish more fantasy worlds had this level of detail, as I often want to know as much as humanly possible about them.