Champions of Circumstance

Let me ask you this question: what does an exiled king, a thief with morals, a young sorcerer off on his own, a high elven wizard with secrets, an unlucky sell-sword, a somewhat clueless child, a man with gambling issues and a sewer needing cleaning have in common?

The answer is: not a whole lot.

But when the king is a three-meter-tall polar bear man, the thief one of the capital’s most wanted, the sorcerer unlucky, the wizard too prideful, the sell-sword cursed with the body of a snailman, the child eons old and made from rock, the gambler a blessed priest and the sewers filled with monsters, then things start getting interesting.

Now five hundred years after the defeat of Molthos the Enslaver, demon emperor and thousand years tyrant of the Almira continent, civilisation has flourished, and the annual Purge Festival is just around the corner in the human capital, Kivar.

Follow a group of less-than-compatible people as their chanced meeting and later enforced companionship get them caught in a deadly popularity contest in which they are forced to participate under the threat of prison. Follow our…not heroes…but champions brought together by circumstance as they battle slavers, oozes, giant insects, blood mages, living plants, nightmarish terrors and more.

Follow along in this book the opening act of an epic tale, depicting the story of those who go from strangers to comrades, to friends and to champions.

Who is Patrick Stigfeldt?

Well, first off, he’s the person who has been granted the possibility to live out one of his biggest dreams, namely the dream to share the amazing story brewing inside his mind with the rest of the world.

Secondly, he’s someone who went from shunning social interaction, and who distrusted others, to at age 27, being married to his love of 11 years and slowly learning how to accept and tolerate others.

Lastly, he’s the one with only a few but amazing friends, friends who, in a bit unusual way and even without knowing it, are instrumental to the existence and creation of the book Patrick wrote.

Customer Reviews

5.0

1 reviews

Argalia Lee

Overall, this story read like a D&D podcast. Lighthearted, good fun, where a band of characters come together, go on an adventure, and grow closer as a team. The narration especially read like a quasi-DM describing the environment or adding expository details to enhance the reader’s conception of this world. The passion really shined through the book, and I can appreciate how much work and thought went into the novel. It's a good reminder that sometimes, if you want to see a certain novel exist, you just need to sit down and write. That being said, this was not a book for me. Pushing aside the lower order concerns like grammar and spelling, I struggled to get through the exposition dumps, written both as didactic prose and dialogue. Furthermore, I could not get a good grasp of the stakes within the story, whether it be because many potential problems were resolved early on or because the biggest one appeared without any real buildup at the end. In the early scenes, characters exhibit incredible emotion, but also have to explain why they feel that emotion at the same time, which left me with an odd sense that I ought to care about these characters' conflicts, even if I don't know them. The dialogue was awkward, whether it be because the characters were expositing, suddenly developing through their dialogue, or were thinking/acting in a way that felt inconsistent to me given their backstories. There's definitely I'm missing, both good and bad, but I didn't want to go crazy trying to discuss every detail within the story. This wasn't a book for me, but I'm sure another reader might enjoy it. I received a review copy for this novel and was asked for my honest opinion.