The Banished Lands Review and Giveaway!

A kingdom in danger. A prophecy that could change everything. The closing lines of a farewell poem, written centuries ago by the last great king of the old world, might prove to be more than it seems:

The world and all its light shall fade;
I'll stay with her beneath the shade
And wait until the world's remade...

Something is creeping at the fringes of the world. Is it just the talk of frightened villagers? Or is it something more? Join us in this entirely new fantasy world. The Banished Lands combines the best of epic fantasy, fairy tale, mythology, poetry, romance and mystery. If you love a good old-fashioned story, The Banished Lands will deliver on your expectations.

A mysterious fog blankets the forest just outside the town of Suriya. A dark plot unfolds as Durian and his friends discover ties between a strange wanderer and the warlike barbarian kingdom far to the north. Are the mysterious things happening in the forest a prelude to invasion? What happens next will propel Durian and his friends into the middle of an unsolved riddle a dozen centuries in the making. This book is safe for kids of all ages.

Review: The Banished Lands is an epic start to a thrilling fantasy series! I enjoyed jumping into the story of good versus evil. It reminded me a little bit of Lord of the Rings, only a bit easier to get swept up in. The characters are well portrayed and I look forward to reading more about the Banished Lands! I'm glad I picked this book up and look forward to reading more by Ben.
I received this book through Celebrate Lit. This is my honest review and is in no way influenced by receiving a complimentary copy.

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About the Author:
Benjamin Mester is a novelist and poet. He fell in love with the written word and beauty of language at a young age, marvelling at the way a story can transport a person, enveloping their whole mind and heart as they dive into new places and grand adventures. A lover of nature, Mester has spent the whole of his adult life immersed in the study of poetry, often wandering the woodlands of northern Minnesota or the beaches of California.
If asked about his writing, he would say his overarching goal is to inspire people to live with greater passion, often quoting one of his favorite Proverbs, 14:8: The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways. How often do we stop to give thought to our ways, asking ourselves why we live the way we do? What does it mean to live to the full? How can I love more deeply? Mester hopes his writing will build a longing in his readers, that his stories inspire them to want more for their lives than the mediocrity of good enough we so often settle for.

Guest Post from Ben:
I’ve always loved that enthralling feeling of adventure and mystery that comes when you dive into a brand new world. My greatest motivation for The Banished Lands was to create a world of rich lore and history, but not overburden the reader with backstory. In The Banished Lands series, we enter a fractured world with a forgotten history. But hints of it remain through a set of poems that speak of the old world and cryptic events which brought an end to that age.

I love the idea of characters living normal, mundane lives, suddenly thrust into an ancient struggle they didn’t even know was raging. I love the fantasy genre because it isn’t ashamed of the classic archetypes – the epic struggle of good and evil, heroics, and everything that often gets the label cliché. Using these archetypes in ways that haven’t been done before was my real motivation for writing The Banished Lands series. The way this series combines poetry, lore and mystery is something unique in the fantasy genre.

When writing this first book, I often sat back and wondered to myself, What would it be like to live in a world with a shrouded past? We often take modern life for granted – the whole wealth of human knowledge at our fingertips. But what would it be like to live in a world where the only history was cryptic poetry telling of a time when the world was a wildly different place? And what if, somehow, those ancient poems that no one really understands seem to be the only thing that really explains the dark things creeping forward from the fringes of the world? Welcome to The Banished Lands!

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Giveaway!
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