The Covenant Rising: Book One of The Dreamtime

By Stan Nicholls

In a land where magic defines the social order, the ruling tyrants alone control the most powerful sorcery ...

One of the last of a massacred race of warriors -- an unparalleled swordsman magically afflicted by spells of blind, uncontrollable rage -- Reeth Caldason wanders Bhealfa seeking vengeance ... and freedom from his strange malady. Now word has come from a sorcerer's apprentice of a mysterious Covenant in the capital city, a secretive society that may provide the escape Reeth desires. But forming an uneasy alliance with the youthful messenger could ultimately prove disastrous -- for the road they musttravel together leads into the sordid heart of a perilous conspiracy of treachery, tyranny, necromancy, and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061828133

Stan Nicholls

Stan Nicholls is the author of many novels and short stories but is best-known for the internationally acclaimed Orcs: First Blood series. His journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Mirror, Time Out, Sight and Sound, Rolling Stone, SFX and Locus among many others. Stan has worked for a number of bookshops and was the first manager of the London’s Forbidden Planet. He lives in the West Midlands with his wife, the writer Anne Gay.

Reviews for The Covenant Rising

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Quite a different take on magic where basically magic is the technology in the world. Reeth Caldason is the last remaining member of a tribe of warriors who were brutally massacred decades ago, he's cursed with fits of blind rage and apparently almost indestructable, and aging very slowly.He wants rid of the spell and this brings him in contact with some very different people, and a resistance who are trying to free their country. There are wheels within wheels and some very complicated politics.The use of magic was interesting, it is treated as technology and used almost as trivially as we would use technology. Magic power varies and the wealthy can afford more than poorer people (there is an amusing aside once with volunteers handing out minor charms to the poor). However the wheels are almost too complicated and you really don't get involved enough in any one character to really connect. Well I didn't anyway. Interesting and I'm looking forward to the followup.

[beezermn · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The Covenant Rising by Stan Nicholls is the first book of The Dreamtime. This book promises a rich, detailed world with a twist on the concept of magic. Magic is regulated by the powers that be. The back cover promises a gripping tale of magic, sword duels, and mystery. This is the first book I have read by Mr. Nicholls so I am basing this review not on a body of work, but on this book as an individual entity. The main plot of this book centers around the search for a mysterious group and what their influence is regarding magic. Along the way there are also subplots of political intrigue, a mysterious death that has long ranging complications. There is also the subplot of the main character being afflicted with a spell that no one has any answers for, but it is causing him great distress. This novel is packed with a great deal of potential. Sadly, the plot falls remarkably flat. It quickly becomes uninteresting and formulaic to the extreme that observant readers will guess where this book will end, and ultimately where the entire series will end up. While the book starts off very well, within the first fifty pages it quickly stagnates into a regurgitation of past fantasy books and is no where near original. In fact there are no less than three sections of the book where it was nigh painful to read due to the pacing and prose and lack of interest in any of the plot points. The characters of this book are equally disappointing. There was a great deal of potential for characters such as Reeth, Kutch, and Serrah, yet, when I finished the book all he characters were largely forgettable. They are riddled with undisguised clichés and the dialog is often redundant and uninteresting. In fact, there were several times while reading this novel that the dialog seemed less like talking than it did the author telling the reader what the reader had to know to make the book make sense. In the end, the best words to describe the characters are flat and uninteresting, which is too bad, because I had high hopes for this novel. One thing I particularly liked about this book is the setting. There seems to be a good amount of potential here. There is a rich history for the world, there are interesting takes on magic and how it is used. I was genuinely interested in the setting. Unfortunately without a good plot, and good characters, the setting can not carry a book. As I mentioned before this book suffers from several things. Poor characters. Both in terms of dialog, development, and riddled with clichés. Mr. Nicholls seems to want to have a very detail, involved plot. Yet, this book may have benefited from a less complex plot. Maybe, Mr. Nicholls tried to do too much with this book and in the end had so much going on he lost the reader. Overall, I didn't enjoy this book even though I tried rather hard to. In the fantasy genre today, there are so many other books out there I can not really see myself ever recommending this one to anyone. In fact, I am not sure if I will read another Nicholls books again. With the dearth of books in the genre, books like this can sour a reader. I may even warn people against reading this one, which I normally never do. Great promise, terrible execution for this novel.