Book Review: "The Sallow Scourge" by E. Stuart Marlowe

I would like to thank 'Voracious Readers Only' for my review copy of this book

When writing a fiction novel, the one thing you must do is transport the reader away from themselves. When I get transported to another world the one thing I hate is lots and lots of ‘here is this…’ and ‘here is that…’ - “Lord of the Rings”, for example does not do that. All of the exposition is carefully woven into the fabric of the story. “Game of Thrones” weaves everything into everything else, the books are written beautifully. “The Night Circus” - a more modern fantasy text, also weaves its exposition into the story, not expecting you to take everything in during one breath. A good story always tries hard to keep you reading in order to learn about the rules, customs and ways of this faraway land you have travelled to.

In this novel I have read, entitled “The Sallow Scourge” we again, get this style of fantastical writing. Exposition that does not feel like it is droning on. Exposition that has been carefully crafted into the story in order to give the reader an experience of story, character and themes all at the same time without having the reader confused or losing interest. It is a very difficult thing to achieve properly, but I think that this book has really done it. Let’s take a look at what it is about, without giving any spoilers away…

The opening paragraph gives us our characters: Allison and Joie - who become rulers of a vast kingdom. Then we are introduced to the ‘Sallow Scourge’ - a ‘curse’ or ‘pestilence’ that confided the queens to their castle more and more. Immediately, we are met with what this story is going to be about and yet, the story is also moving along, introducing dialogue to us and showing us exactly how different these two queens really are. One is more rebellious, whilst the other focuses on being a good and obedient queen.

As the story continues, we get even more of this. Small paragraphs of some description and explanation and then, the characters enact the scene. It is really quite engrossing to read as the characters of the two queens seem to be drifting further and further away from each other in terms of personality. It is not immediately handed to us that they are so different, only stating that they are different as the ‘sun and the moon’, but we get this breakdown of the relationship between the two sisters whilst we are getting deep into the story as well. The two work concurrently to create huge amounts of tension in the book.

I would like to mention another thing I really enjoyed about this novel: the language and writing style. The book is set in this somewhat dark and Medieval period and so, the characters speak like they are part of the Medieval court with references to archaic language. Never once does this falter throughout the whole book and because making this kind of language consistent through the text is difficult as hell, I would like to commend the author for their efforts. It really brought the whole text to life without going through masses of explanation. The language style of the queens and their court really brings the reader into the story, taking them to this Medieval-styled realm with its dark-ages-esque plague mixed with fantasy and horror.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and though I don’t want to give away any major plot points, I think that by at least the end of Part 1, you will be really surprised at what has just happened - it will be almost impossible not to read on.