Review of Lamentation by Ken Scholes

 

Lamentation
Ken Scholes
Tor
421 pages
ISBN 13: 9780765360918

Lamentation is the first book in the Psalms of Isaak series

 Windmir is gone, the once Golden City the center of culture, education and religion is nothing but smoke, ash and bones. What or who caused this terrible desolation, and most important why. The devastation will bring out the best and the worst in people, some will rise to and above their potential and some will slither away, some will shine and some will show their true tarnish, some will live and some will die, but all will never forget. There are schemes at work here and it’s up to a chosen few to not only protect what is left but to prepare for the future, a future with more questions than answers, more doubt than hope, more fear than resolve. But these are the peoples of The Named Lands and they’re made of strong stuff and they’ll need to be to make it from their Lamentation to a Canticle.

Ken Scholes is a luminous voice in a genre of plenty, a relatively new voice and yet one so versed in his own new world that it seems they’ve been around for ever. This is not my first reading of Lamentation, I was lucky enough to get at ARC of the third in the series Antiphon and to give it what it deserves I read the first two in the series first. I was literally blown away by the creation of this semi-familiar and yet very foreign world and it’s people. It was familiar in the language and objects and so I didn’t have to learn a whole other vernacular, but the landscape was total make believe and he instilled the views in my mind with his narrative. Then there were his characters, most human with one very special metal man, the man of the hour Isaak who’s humanistic compassion set him far above his compatriots and other humans in the tale. His human characters are as diverse as the world they live in but they are all eloquently detailed and we readers will get all the in-depth information on them we need to make the read more enjoyable.

Lamentation is a love story, it’s a mystery, it’s a thriller and it’s filled with vivid imagery that highlights the author’s creative genius. If you’re a fan of Science Fiction you will love this, but that’s not a pre-requisite to enjoy this novel and the novels that follow.
Buy the book here visit the author’s website here