OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO:  D.W. Ross is a Scottish writer of fantasy fiction. A lover of fiction from an early age he spent his time buried in the pages of books given to him by his grandfather. From then his imagination decided to run rampant and for as long as he can remember he crafted stories.

For years he spent time pushing the stories away with no confidence to take the plunge and give in to his creativity. Finally, in 2019 he took a grasp of one of the stories and began to write The Onyxborn Chronicles. Cold From The North was published in 2020 with the follow up The Darkest Dusk released in 2021. The Fury Of Fate, the final installment of The Onyxborn Chronicles, was released on October 26th.

He is currently working on his second project, a four book series tentatively titled The Rebirth of Caledon. A prequel novella launching the tale, characters and motives is due out in January 2023 with the first full novel of the series expected in Q4 2023.

He lives in the West of Scotland with his wife and daughter, spends too much time listening to Two Steps From Hell, longing for the one day of Scottish summer and drinking copious sugar free irn bru.

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB:  Driven by the promise of an ancient prophecy which will bring the dark ways of an old god back to power and prominence, an army of invaders swarms Ogulf Harlsbane’s homeland slaughtering all those who oppose them. Along with his people, Ogulf must seek refuge from this savage force.

In his search of sanctuary, he is tasked with finding the one person who can put a stop to the onslaught. Doing so will send him across lands and seas, have him and his closest friend navigate the intricacies of a civil war, and try to win the help of the princess fighting for her throne. If he fails, darkness will prevail and the reign of the Onyxborn will begin.

FORMAT/INFO: Cold From the North  was published by the author in November 13, 2020. It is available in hardback, paperback, and kindle formats and contains 471 pages. It is the first book int he Onyxborn Chronicle series.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: An enjoyable norse tinged throwback to classic fantasy. At times it fell into a few debut author pitfalls, and pacing could've been more consistent, but a good time was always had. The rowsing end showed off DW's clear authorial promise and by trilogies end i am sure he will be a firm fantasy favourite.

As a debut novel, I thought this one was rather spot on! When one considers the fact that Ross started writing in 2019, publishing in 2020, it makes this an all the more impressive start!

This book follows the exploits of Ogulf, his best friend Melcun, and their wizened mentor Maclan. Forced to leave their homeland in the frigid north by an enemy invasion, Ogulf and gang have to fight against the odds to make a dangerous crossing in the vain hope of gaining help from other empires across the way.

I absolutely loved the first 25% or so of this novel, it gave us a wonderful introduction to the homeland of Ogulf, the ways of their people and prophecies, before kicking into hyperdrive with their dash to escape and save their people. It felt rather like an episodic D+D adventure, but in a really good way! Just enough worldbuilding and interconnection between the different plots, and yet it felt it could have easily been the events taking place episode by episode in a live play RPG podcast.

The relationship between our three central characters in Ogulf, Melcun, and Maclan was also a strong highlight. The brotherhood between Ogulf and Melcun felt tight and made up for the somewhat lack of solo character development. Maclan was a character I absolutely loved, I was easily invested in him from the start, and he really was the heart of this story in a lot of ways.

Unfortunately, once the first major set piece is out of the way, the pace does fall to a middling speed. Whilst it did allow for a fleshing out of the magic and history of the world, it did feel rather structured instead of a natural flow of the story.

I would say that this one of the few debut pitfalls that this book did fall into, along with a copious use of similar dialogue tags. I also must admit that writing this review a few months following my listen there is a struggle to recall some of the details, especially regarding where the book left us off, although I do recall being very excited by it at the time! Unfortunately, it just hasn’t left a particularly long-lasting impression on me in a way some others have.

However, what does stick with me is how fun the book felt.

It has a classic feel, but Ross inflects it with enough of his flavour to pull it into his own. Especially being a debut novel written in such a swift time period, it really does commit well to the fantasy tropes, and would certainly leave most avid fantasy readers with a smile on their face and eager to read the sequel.