Review: The Fallen Odyssey
Corey McCullough
326 pages
2018 (Self-published)
Read this if you like: The Chronicles of Narnia, Dragonlance, Wheel of Time
tl;dr summary: Western PA teenager is pulled into a magical alternate dimension in a good-vs-evil-quest meets coming-of-age adventure.
The opening pages of The Fallen Odyssey are a masterclass in jumping right into the action. There’s roughly seven pages setting up protagonist Justin’s reality before he’s unceremoniously whisked away to high fantasy land—and, even more impressive, those seven pages proved enough for me to feel grounded in Justin’s world. They’re packed with both character building and key backstory. High fantasy is one of those genres that’s often guilty of slow, meandering openings, so it was refreshing to just get dropped right in.
This approach makes storytelling sense, too—after all, that’s exactly what happens to Justin. The Fallen Odyssey starts from a relatively common trope: young human travels to a fantasy world where they make friends, have adventures, fight evil, and save the day. In Justin’s case, he doesn’t even know how he was transported to this alternate realm, much less how to get himself back. Luckily he wakes up with a couple of magical mentors close at hand, along with a royal love interest. Others join their merry band of adventures as they travel, including a pair of hardened warriors and an eccentric ship captain with a mysterious past.
In short, this is a classic quest narrative, and it’s a very fun and well-told example of the trope. McCullough does bring some fresh worldbuilding to the traditional vaguely Medieval fantasy setting, too. The supernatural baddies in this universe are variants of demons, who use a dark energy called daemyn, the opposite of the aurym power that the heroes wield. The little ones (cobylns) have a somewhat orc-ish energy but more grotesque in a way I very much enjoyed. The big bads (cythraul) are even more fun, sword wielding giant demons with fiery eyes and powerful magic.
The magic system in The Fallen Odyssey is also very cool. It uses some classic components, like focus stones and elemental magic, but with a dash of chaos. Each wielder of aurym can use it in one specific area—fire, for example, or healing; one character makes plants grow at will, which proves a far more useful skill in combat than I would have thought. Magic users can enhance their abilities with stones, but they have to find the right ones, first, since not all of them will work for all the types of magic. The extra limitations effectively keep any one individual from becoming too powerful, forcing them to collaborate Captain Planet style.
I personally like a fantasy world that has a bit of grit, and I feel like The Fallen Odyssey delivered on that point, as well. I think it strikes a nice balance when it comes to descriptions of battles and injuries where it doesn’t shy away from gore but it’s also not gratuitous. I also appreciated what that did for the stakes. This felt like a world where good guys could die, and that added more tension when their safety was threatened (which is, to be fair, the majority of the book).
My only minor quibble with The Fallen Odyssey is more a question of structure than story. There were a few places I found the very short chapters jarring and wished they were replaced by a simple scene break, or even just a continuation of the last scene in some instances. There were a couple of times the chapter breaks felt like they were trying to impose a cliffhanger that didn’t need to be there, and other places I felt like the chapter break disrupted my reading flow. It was never enough to completely jolt me out of the story, though, and there were some places having those short chapters made them feel like Pringles, where I just couldn’t stop reading, so there are definitely spots where the format serves the story.
The bottom line is this is a fun and unique take on the classic sword-and-sorcery model and a book I’d definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys a good group quest adventure. Also, at risk of sounding like a snooty member of the publishing establishment, this is one of the few self-published books I’ve read that doesn’t read like it. It’s well-edited as well as well-written, and I think would feel right at home in any YA fantasy publisher’s catalog.
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