by Lee Hunt
Publishing Company: Lee Hunt
Release Date: Tuesday, March 1 2022
Format: Audio
Is This Book Romance?: No
ISBN: 9781999093594
Price: $18.99 USD
Story Type: Novel
Word Count: 147,000
Cover Artist: Jeff Brown
Genres: Fantasy, epic fantasy, magical realism, dark fantasy
LGBTQ+ Identities: It is quite subtle, but all the Methueyn Knights are pan-sexual, and there is a sex scene that is pansexual
Tropes (don't we love them?!): Uncovering the past, Going forward or going backwards, secret past, unlikely hero
Is This Part of a Series?: Yes
Series Title: The Dynamicist Trilogy
Position (Number) in Series: Third
Necessary to Read Previous Books: Yes
Other Books in Series:
1 – Dynamicist
2 – Herald
Was This Book Published in An Earlier Edition?: Not under a different edition, but the paperback and eBook versions have been out since Sept 2020
*I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. No compensation has been given, and I write this book review willingly. A big thanks to Lee Hunt and Other Worlds Ink!*
Introduction
So, dear Other Worlds Ink approached me with Knight in Retrograde for a blog tour. I said: What, a seemingly science fantasy told like an epic fantasy in audiobook format with a glorious narrator?!
What else was there to say, honestly?
I'm a strong woman, but this story knew my cravings.
How about we see my love for it in detail??
Blurb
Would you trade uncertainty for stagnation, chance for god, invention for inertia, thought for dogma?
Four years have passed since the events of Dynamicist and war is on the horizon.
Robert, Koria, Eloise and Gregory went to the New School, hoping to change the world. They thought that mathematically based dynamics, the enlightened age's answer to wizardry, would give them the power to make everything better. Their hopes were naïve.
Protestors are condemning the creation of a new vaccine. The city is seeing a series of hangings; is it murder or sacrament? The cloaked man is back stalking students. The long-absent demons Skoll and Hati reappear and begin slaughtering whoever they meet. But the real question is, will Nimrheal return? If he does, who will die first?
Uncertainty is inspiring fear, and inventions are not making the world better, only more complicated. The terrified civilians don't want dynamics and reason. They want the word of Elysium and the return of the Methueyn Knights.
Koria fears the world faces an awful conundrum: that if the Knights return, Nimrheal will stay.
Will Robert, Koria, Eloise and Gregory choose to transform into angelic knights or, at the cost of such heavenly communion, instead banish Nimrheal? What price will be paid? If a new Methueyn Knight rises, will the age of invention disappear forever?
The Positive Sides
The two major points that struck me were how spicy and rich the vocabulary and phraseology are! By spicy, I mean, well-woven, unexpected, carefully chosen for maximum effect. Second, the main character's voice is highly refreshing and one I've been waiting for a long time. It's also quite hilarious and sarcastic, loved it!
Its harsh, intriguing and powerful beginning grabbed me right on, and its fairytale-like storytelling is a blessing. Not the cute, Disney style (which I love), but more like the narrator from the Grimm fairy tales (which I also love)!
Then, this story offers a lot of concepts and things to keep track of, but it's not a bad thing! They're all so weird mixed together it's like they begged to be put together! I mean, they fit, they make an awesome whole and story! It's fantastic, clever, hilarious, and full of science & mathematical references (who'd have thought I'd like it? Not me!)
What about the audiobook itself? First things first: the narration is SO much fun and engaging! Usually, I dislike male narrators because they're monotonous and boring with flat voices, but Craig A. Hart has so many inflections and emotions; he's not reading the story, he's living it. I was hooked from the first words! Honestly, it's one of the best audiobooks I ever read! Which is funny because I'm not a big audiobook reader. I read a few per year, and I'm very picky about them, and it's easy to disappoint me in this field. So, it says a lot, don't you think? In short, the quality of the audio, the narration, the storytelling and the story is mind-blowing–they all work in sync!
In the end (cue Linkin Park's song), while I didn't read the previous books (a wrong I'll right quite soon!), it didn't matter. Everything is entertaining, highly engaging, and summarizes what happened skillfully. I want all of them! YUP!
*I find it's hilarious and ironic how Lee Hunt and the Dynamicist Trilogy gained a new fan with the very last book… Still, it'll be an adventure to read the other books in the trilogy. I loved it, okay?!?
The Negative Sides
There are only two.
The first one pertains to the characters. While they are good and amusing, they seemed a bit distant or out-of-reach to me due to how the story is told. It feels like an omniscient narrator, yes, but in an overview way. It flies over each before diving into the main character's voice, then it's distant again, and so on. I couldn't get get attached to the other characters as much as I could with the main character, which is a shame. But I liked them overall, anyway.
The last one is how it took me a while to catch on it was a woman speaking–every time. Not only because of the man narrating the story, but also due to its scattered hints about who was speaking at the moment. It appeared unclear to me at the time.
In Conclusion
Despite the two light negative points, it was, I must say, a rather enjoyable adventure I went on with Knight in Retrograde! It's definitely one of my five favorite audiobooks ever, and I'll purchase the previous books in this trilogy because I had such a fun time with this finale. Imagine that! Thus, a science fantasy vibe in an epic fantasy-like setting and story with amazing vocabulary, phraseology and incredible audio storytelling quality? Nothing less than a rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 would be a mathematical crime! 😉 And I fell in love with this quality audiobook, plain and simple. Kudos to Craig A. Hart, the narrator, for this incredible performance!
If you want to learn more about the author, Lee Hunt:
Ever try to do things you were really not well suited to? Lee Hunt understands. He was born with only one working lung, but has gone on to be an Ironman triathlete, a sport rock climber, and a professional geophysicist. The poor lung function has been an excellent excuse for his unimpressive triathlon performance—he is among the worst of those able to complete the Ironman under his own power—and is of some service in eliciting a modicum of sympathy for his average at-best skills as a climber. Actually no one on a rock wall really cares about excuses. It’s a climb-or-fall kind of thing.
His marginal ability to breathe is of no use whatsoever in explaining his career as a geophysicist. He was good at that. Lee published close to fifty journal papers, articles or expanded abstracts, has been awarded numerous best paper awards, and was even sent on a national speaking tour to Canadian universities by the Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists. He was born on a farm but grew up near the giant oil sand mines of Fort McMurray and is interested in discussing the environment and the amorality of science. He is also useful at parties in explaining the physics around why, or why not, fracture stimulation might be a risk to manmade structures and the fuzzy cuddly things of nature. Lee’s career helped him appreciate the difficulty in predicting outcomes, the dangers of arrogance—such as thinking you can predict even the smallest thing—and the exigent need to try anyway. He was comfortable and happy being a geophysicist, so after twenty-eight years, he quit to go do the things he was less well suited to.
If you want to hang out with Lee, look for him hiking, cycling, floundering in a lake, clinging desperately to a wall, or at his desk trying to write an entertaining story.
A huge thanks to Other Worlds Ink for this amazing blog tour opportunity!
See you next post, lovelies!
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