The war priests of Andrak have protected the world from the encroaching darkness for generations. Stewards of the Purifying Flame, the priests stand upon their castle walls each year for 100 days. Along with the best fighters, soldiers, and adventurers from across the lands, they repulse the Omegri invasions.

But their strength wanes and evil spreads.

Lizette awakens to a nightmare, for her daughter has been stolen during the night. When she goes to the Baron to petition aid, she learns that similar incidents are occurring across the duchy. Her daughter was just the beginning. Baron Einos of Fent is left with no choice but to summon the war priests.

The Children of Never, by Christian Warren Freed, is a dark fantasy with an air of mystery. It follows a range of characters as they try to understand and solve the problem of children going missing in the duchy of Fent; a problem which starts off sinister and only grows worse as they come to understand the true nature of the forces at play.

Freed does a good job at avoiding the dreaded info dump, scattering in backstory for his characters and world as it comes up. There were times when I felt I didn’t have quite enough information to appreciate what was going on, or lacked the context to understand tensions between certain factions, but on the whole I thought this worked well and gave the fantasy world Freed has created a complete, lived-in feel. The story moves quickly through the plot, and while this made the passage of time a little difficult to keep track of (particularly during a fairly intense chase sequence closer to the end) it definitely kept me interested and prevented the story from sagging—a common problem with this genre of fantasy.

I thought a real strength of the story was in its characters and some of the smaller moments between them. I loved Lizette, a woman who loses her daughter in the first few chapters. She takes the pain and confusion of that terrible loss and turns it into strength, becoming one of the backbones of the plot. I also thought there were some very sweet moments between Baron Einos, responsible for the people of Fent and understandably troubled by the recent turn of events, and his wife Aneth.

Another element that I enjoyed was the variety of creatures and monsters lurking within the pages. It was sometimes a little difficult to work out whether people believed in these entities before coming face to face with them, and I felt like we got some contradictory moments around that in certain instances (characters talking as if some creature were obviously real, and then being stunned to see one because they were supposed to be myth, or vice versa), but that didn’t distract too much from the appeal of seeing such a range of magical entities getting involved in the story.

There were two main drawbacks for me while reading this, one more personal and one more nitpicky. Personally, I found the style of the writing a barrier to fully immersing myself in the world, although I think it’s very of the genre. Epic fantasy definitely tends towards the heightened language Freed uses in this book, and I know most readers of the genre either don’t mind or actively enjoy it, but I found it a bit much at times if I’m honest. The other thing was a tendency to slip between perspectives mid-chapter, sometimes several times, which I found confusing and distracting. I’m not sure how much of this was deliberate, there were some other proofreading misses which make me wonder whether this might just have been in error, but it happened often enough that I feel reasonably confident it was a writing decision and so feel okay commenting on it in my review.

Those issues aside, I thought Children of the Never was an intriguing fantasy story with strong world-building and some great characters. I definitely want to learn more about the war priests! If you’re a fan of dark or epic fantasy, enjoy mystery and like seeing an array of mystical creatures battle it out over the fate of the world, I recommend picking up this story. It’s available now on Amazon (UK or US).

Want to know more about the author? Check out his social media!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChristianWFreed
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristianFreed
Blog: https://christianwfreed.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8137590.Christian_Warren_Freed
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B005HP3EOW

Thank you so much to Emma Welton for giving me the chance to get involved in the Damp Pebbles blog tour for this book!