Age of Blood Chronicles is an Epic Fantasy novel by H.R. Parsley. The first book, A Fire in the South, was self published in 2013 and is currently available on Lulu.com, Amazon, and the Ibook and Nook stores.
The books take place in the fictional world of Erala and follow the story of the young blacksmith apprentice Jason, the Champion of Light, after his home is destroyed by demonic invaders. Jason escapes with his friends and only the name Fregon and the instruction to go to the city of Dragonis to find him and the answers to Jason's mysterious powers. Jason meets many people in his journey and ends up becoming embroiled in the war to save mankind from the very demons that destroyed his home. The story is told from four main viewpoints: Jason, Riak, a Thassarian nobleman who ends up becoming a mentor to Jason, the sarcastic fire mage Junior, the deadpan snarker of the group, and his responsible older brother Martin, a hardened warrior.
Disclaimer: this article reflects an earlier version of this content that is currently undergoing heavy revision and will likely be taken out of print and re-released.
This series provides examples of:
- Action Girl:
- Onara, a Fiery Red Head who has no trouble keeping up with the rest of the cast in combat and who's peacetime occupation is tending Freaking Dragons.
- The Alchemist is quite the shot with her Steampunk poison crossbow.
- Alchemy Is Magic: Averted, dwarven alchemy is pretty much what it was in real life: mixing a bunch of chemicals trying to turn lead into gold and stumbling upon useful compounds.
- Alien Blood: The Demons have Black blood.
- Anti-Hero: Riak is one of these. He is fully willing to execute enemy combatants, use dark magic, and has absolutely no patience for politics and societal niceties.
- Badass Longcoat: Civran wears one of these to cover his sharkskin armor and arsenal of weapons.
- Badass Normal: Martin is the only human in the main cast with no magic powers to speak of that still fights on the same level(or arguably above) most of the other characters.
- Background Magic Field: In the form of omnipresent Creation energy molded to cast spells.
- Can't Argue with Elves: Played with, Thassari characters seem every bit as flawed as everyone else, just noticeably calmer and older. Just don't call them elves.
- Cast from Hit Points: Life energy is required to cast any spell. Dark Magic allows a mage to take this from other living things, but few characters use it and it has been outlawed in The Free Kingdoms.
- Cat Folk: The Pantherins.
- Church Militant: The Order of Illuminaton in a nutshell, while also being incredibly corrupt.
- Cool Sword:
- Riak's Thassarian Crystal Kopis Faarthing
- Jason's Dual swords Sols Dens
- Junior's flaming dagger, the laughing blade, in a flashback of his youth.
- Decadent Court: Virtually every civilization has one.
- Deadpan Snarker: Junior is this throughout the book, but a few others have their moments.
- Draconic Humanoid: The Akatii
- Elemental Powers: The whole magic system is this, with each element responding to a different emotion.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Multiple.
- The Dwarves seem to be divided between Tsarist Russia and medieval Scotland
- The Empire appears to be Rome.
- The Akatii Dynasty and The Free East look like a medieval version of North and South Korea.
- The Northern Union has a very Nordic flair to it, while also having some generic elven elements.
- The Free Kingdoms are quite a bit like a feudal United States.
- The Desert people are African tribes.
- Fantasy World Map: On the first page of the book.
- Fantasy Gun Control: Averted, early black powder weapons are commonplace and have been for fifty years.
- Lizard Folk: The Coronodrians.
- Standard Fantasy Setting: Played with to the point of almost being a deconstruction. The world is Darker and Edgier than most examples, Medieval Stasis is averted, and race tropes are heavily examined.
