The Rune by MK Muerte

The northern continents are over-populated and there is little arable land remaining to support the continued growth in population. Mankind should be working together, but the hands of chaos are interfering. Two superpowers vie against each other in the race to cross the equatorial Barrier. It has never been done before. One superpower sends out a team to find the source of myth in a hope of an easy way out, whilst also attempting a solution through technology. The other superpower looks to force as a means. War is imminent, while a far a greater threat lies lurking; a threat of legends and myth. 

Mkay this is a weird review to be writing ... because I know the author. Which is the reason I read this book. It really isn't my usual genre. Which is why it took me ages to read ... 

So yeah, it's hard for me to recommend. I think if you enjoy this sort of genre, then you might enjoy this book. It started really slowly for me, making the same mistake I feel Heroes made and Game of Thrones is in the process of making ... too many characters to follow. All telling the story from their point of view. It was hard, I kept forgetting who was who (even by the end of the book, there were one or two people who had completely fallen out of my brain ... I assume they'll become relevant in the later parts of the trilogy, which has yet to be written). But there were definitely also characters I liked and wanted to read more about :) By the end I was on board with the story line and quite enjoying it :) (The last 20% went much quicker!) Which is why I think people who are used to this style and genre will probably like it.

I am not a fan of flowery descriptive verbage. It's a large part of why I could never read Lord of the Rings .... 4 pages to describe a forest, no thank you very much. (Yeah I know, it's a classic :P) So I did find this overly descriptive (not nearly as bad as that tho!), which also added to it taking a little determination from me to finish.

I struggled with the vast geography (my electronic version didn't have a map in the front I could keep flipping to ... although I did have a link to the map, it's hard to keep checking back online while reading). I recommend you print the map out, in hindsight, I really should've.

Also I didn't like the ending, it felt more like one story split into three parts ... so didn't really feel like it ended, just paused. I guess technically that is what a trilogy is :P I'm far more accustomed to reading books in a series, so they have all the same characters but each book is an entire stand-alone story on it's own.

Anyway, I think it's an amazing achievement, a whole book. By someone I know :) I definitely support that!