Reviewed: September 23rd, 2021
Released: December 8th, 2020
Genre: Epic Fantasy
In the port city of Penderyn, Silbrey once served as a soldier for the cruel, ambitious guildmaster. Silbrey escaped the city and her life of violence by rushing into marriage and motherhood. Now she returns to Penderyn to atone for her crimes and confront the guildmaster who controlled her.
Silbrey discovers there is more to her past than even she realized, beyond the familiar cobbled streets of the city. What begins as a fairy tale transforms into an epic adventure about love and loss—and a woman with a strange connection to the natural world.
Helen’s thoughts: 5/5
The Dryad’s Crown series is not just a book series, is it a work of art. From the delicate earthy covers to the beautiful illustrations you’ll find inside.
A Slow Parade in Penderyn is the first novella, and it is a very well written story about Silbrey, a young woman abused and indoctrinated from birth. She kills without compunction, without regret, because that is all she knows, until one day she meets a man who changes her view on life.
This is a lovely story, more like a fairytale, because it is as if someone is telling you a story, reporting it instead of you experiencing it from the characters perspective. Add in the beautiful artwork and the overall experience is lovely.
For such a short book, according to Amazon 87 pages, Hopkins packs in a lot of information, building a world you can clearly imagine, with characters drawn so well you understand their motivations.
This is the first in a planned series of ten novellas. It’s like you’ve read the prologue. The scene is set, the wound has been dealt, now the story begins. It is an interesting idea to release a novella every three months. A throw back to how Charles Dickens used to write a chapter a week in the newspaper. You can learn more about background to this series in a recent Author interview I did with David Hopkins, you can find it here.
About the author:
David Hopkins writes a little bit of everything. His work includes the novel WEAR CHAINMAIL TO THE APOCALYPSE, the short story collection WE MISS ALL THE GREAT PARTIES, and the burlesque memoir THE WILD AND WAYWARD TALES OF TAMMI TRUE. David has been a regular contributor to D Magazine, Smart Pop Books, and Fanboy Radio. He has written op-eds for the Dallas Morning News and Chicago Tribune, comic books and graphic novels in a variety of genres, and even a few D&D adventures.
You can find more about David via:
Book One: A Slow Parade in Penderyn
Link to book on Amazon UK: eBook
Link to book on Amazon US: eBook
If you enjoy fantasy books then you will love my books which are available in eBook or paperback: Book One: Sentinals Awaken. Book Two: Sentinals Rising. Book Three: Sentinals Justice. Sign up to my newsletter and download a free novella called Sentinals Stirring and get notified when my next books are published.
Helen Garraway 