Well, it took a bit longer than I expected, but a couple of nights of insomnia and I’ve finished a second read on Cello’s Gate. I came across the title on Kickstarter, browsing through epic fantasy titles. I’m not exactly sure what part of it caught my eye. The banner is simple but clean, giving it a professional elegance. It’s got a nicely done cinematic trailer- that I only saw now, after going back to look at the campaign (I often ignore videos:). But overall, the entire campaign has a clean simplicity. I think that keeps the focus on the content. It is all clean, neat, streamlined, and visually appealing.

The campaign description is intriguing:

It’s a science fantasy, action & adventure epic following a crew of sky pirates who are hired by an ancient immortal to go on a treasure hunt. There are mythic knights who wield mechanized swords that can cut through steel. Wise-cracking gunslingers, mouthy pilots, and oracles who can read memories with a touch. There are assassins who can teleport through shadows and druidic elementalists who can move the planet with their will. Not to mention an ever-growing bestiary featuring ape-like golems, mountain drakes, and giant spiders.

So, seeing something I might be interested in reading, and also very committed to supporting other authors’ Kickstarter campaigns. This is his first, btw, and I think it’s his first book, also. So, that was an added incentive to showing support.

Anyway, the book was already completed, so very soon after the campaign ended, I had a copy of it in my BookFunnel library. I sideloaded that to my Kindle (that’s a thing, it’s pretty easy, if anyone is curious about how to get non-Kindle titles onto a Kindle ;). And I was soon plowing through the pages of a very well-crafted story.

Grey is a sky pirate, one of the very best in the business, with his own high-end ship and a top-notch crew. These characters are all well fleshed out with unique character traits and well-developed back stories. There’s Willow and Bones, who are the ship’s pilot and tech support people.. Married with dreams of one day owning their own ship– which does not stop Willow from occasionally making jokes about stealing Trench (Grey’s ship;).  I am left wondering if Bones ever said yeah- let’s do it.. if she actually would:)  They have a very entertaining married-life dynamic that shows a deep love for each other, but Willow isn’t beyond slapping him on the head when he’s an idiot:)

There’s Dot, the almost mystic ninja, who reminds me of a sci-fi version of my own Ch’hikk.. the legendary fighter you really don’t want to cross. ever.  She has been raised by a mystic order from the time she was four, or perhaps even younger, and had become a master fighter before she’d reached adolescence. Now, she is the equal of a god in terms of her fighting skills. At least the equal of Cello, almost, who is at least immortal. I’m not sure if that qualifies him as a deity in this universe:)

And there’s Minnesota, the one slight enigma in this story, at least to me. She is an oracle, I believe. I really need to delve back into the earlier pages to see if there was something I missed. She is a lifelong friend of Grey’s, and there are definite hints about his romantic but unrealized emotions for her. The enigma for me is that there are at least two scenes where she is caught in a combat scenario, where the others are fighting. She grips her staff, and there are implications that she has skills, but she just seems to be frozen, without any explanation for why. A single line about, for all her training, she’d never seen actual combat, and she froze. But if she’s been traveling with a band of sky pirates for a while, that doesn’t entirely make sense. And later, she does, in fact, join the combat, indicating that she does have fighting skills. So, I am a little uncertain about her circumstances. It may just be that there was a section I missed in the reading.

Anyway, those are the primary characters.  The story: they are approached by a woman, Dahlia. Okay, approached may not be the correct term. She shows up on their ship, seeming to have bypassed all their security, with a job offer. It’s a job offering an extravagant amount of money, with an equally jaw-dropping amount deposited into their accounts immediately. The money is too good for any of them to refuse.  That may have been their first mistake lol. Any time something seems too good to be true, there’s probably fine print somewhere. Look closely enough, and it will read: you are probably screwed and will end up dead.

The mission: one of the ancient gods had been divided into seven pieces, and those pieces had been buried/hidden. They are to retrieve the piece. Dahlia has acquired information regarding the locations of these missing artifacts. Artifacts? Are slivers of a god considered artifacts? I’m not sure:)

So, off they go to an island that has been hidden from all detection, with plenty of protections set in place. The story unfolds through a series of tests, traps, and challenges. I’m not sure if all of them are completely realistic.. but they are all well enough done that it doesn’t really matter. Would someone really design this kind of living obstacle course to protect a slice of divinity? Who cares:) It’s a fun romp with well-designed challenges, and the plot unfolds neatly. They encounter the guardian of the island and realize they have also fallen into a trap, as they have been pursued to the island by other people who are also interested in acquiring this precious slice of the divine. No super big surprise there, I mean, who wouldn’t want a tiny nugget of a deity in their pocket? 🙂

Anyway, I think anyone who enjoys either the fantasy of scifi genres will find this an entertaining read. There’s just enough science for the tech geeks, with torch-weapons that sound like a cross between a light saber and a laser cannon:)  And it’s not so tech-oriented to be annoying to a pure-fantasy reader.

His KS campaign did spectacularly well. And I am keeping an eye out for any updates regarding the second book. I’d imagine there could be as many as seven books in the series, since there are seven shards.