The Fall of Erlon / Robert H. Fleming

Title / The Fall of Erlon

Author / Robert H. Fleming

Series / The Falling Empire saga – book 1

Published / 2019

Page no. / 332

Overall Rating / ★★★.5

The Fall of Erlon is the first book in the Falling Empires saga and was one of the finalist for the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO) 2020. It is a military fantasy story and it follows multiple character perspectives. This series is four books long.

This first instalment starts out strong, with a meeting between a King and an exiled emperor. It is an intriguing start to this story and it immediately pulled me in. While I enjoyed the story overall, I found that the characters were a little underdeveloped. A few of the characterisations felt a bit simplistic (particularly Elisa and Rapp) which meant that I didn’t become invested in the characters until later on in the book. It’s also stated fairly early on that Elisa is fourteen but to mean she seemed to be older than that – also got confused as to how a fourteen year old girl could carry a deer as she does at the beginning of the book, I don’t know maybe their deer are smaller. Anyway their development throughout the book does improve and I did like the characters overall. 

 

As someone who enjoys military fantasy, I enjoyed the military elements of the story and thought they were well done. The world was an interesting one, although not as fleshed out as I hoped. There is some magic in this world but we don’t see a whole lot in this first book. Hopefully the magic system will be explored more in the sequels. The plot had a lot of potential but I felt that some of the character perspective dragged it down a little and it was predictable at times. If you are looking for something new in the fantasy genre then this one probably isn’t for you, but it is still an enjoyable fantasy read. 

 

Overall I enjoyed this book overall, but not as much as I had hoped. It had a lot of potential but it fell a little flat for me and the underdeveloped characters let it down. I still found it to be an enjoyable, quick military fantasy read though. Have you guys read this book? I’d love to know what you thought. Let’s chat in the comments. I hope you are all having a wonderful day and I will see you next time.

 

 

Pippa