An Unlikely Friend by Damien Wells

[Megawatts]

The first paragraph gets one’s attention, and I like how some slight description helps us picture a mediaeval-type city that portrays danger. Sword and Sorcery greatly benefits from descriptive writing and this story uses description very strategically until the end. Nice.

What’s interesting is the clarity with the characters and actions as Aselia searches for the herb, finds her parents murdered and befriends Tarenthel after a brief conflict over misunderstanding his innocence. Very often Sword and Sorcery stories and their sub genres use language that is hard to follow. This story didn’t, yet it kept us immersed with elfs, orcs, and a wood spirit —a Vara’tul. When the characters spoke, they spoke English! Something the readers can understand and not a cross between Russian, Chinese and Arabic! The description in this story keeps us in a Sword and Sorcery world in which there is no need for language that is not natural to the ear. I’ve read some stories where the elfs and demons couldn’t be understood unless you studied what they said. I usually never finished them.

The story held my attention after the opening and I enjoyed the development of Asetia and Tarenthel until they finally hunter down the killer, Telthel.


As I said before, good description and I felt that very good and easy-to-understand dialogue guided this story. The dialogue sounded natural.

Good job; I like it and I’m not one who reads Sword and Sorcery much!

Sword and Sorcery can adress questions related to socal unrest, war, discrimination, politics, education . . . because it is unlimited creativity where the characters can be anything! And they can be involved with other characters that are, well, anything your imagination can draw!