Review: Thread Slivers (Golden Threads Trilogy Book 1), by Leeland Artra

This book was named Book of the Month for June at the Indie Book Club over on Goodreads

Thread Slivers focuses primarily on Ticca, a new(ish) Dagger [a sort of elite mercenary] and Lebuin, a Journeyman mage with a fashion fixation. The pair is brought together by chance when they both end up embroiled in a nefarious plot by a group that murdered a magus.

There’s rather more description than I’ve become used to, but this doesn’t slow the pace as might be imagined and I quite liked it (fashion descriptions aside). Ticca and Lebuin are likeable, and I thought the story was at its best when following them (which it does almost exclusively for the first half).

The author does have a tendency to info-dump through exposition (whether dialogue or inner monologue). It’s not done in huge slabs of text, thankfully, but I do prefer a show-don’t-tell approach.

The world is well-realised and it’s clear (from both the appendices at the back and some discussion on the Indie Book Club forum) that a lot of thought and work went into making it a coherent, detailed world. Strangely, therefore, certain terms did stand out as incongruous, but later references suggest that they will actually fit in and make sense once more of the history of the world is revealed (in later books).

When the story drifts from Ticca and Lebuin some of the focus was lost, and I think a bit more of the central plot (ie why the gang of nefarious fellows were doing what they were doing) could have been revealed.

The writing style is easy to read. The only time I found myself going back to check something was when someone’s name unexpectedly changed, but that was entirely deliberate and explained shortly thereafter.

On the whole, I liked Thread Slivers, particularly the parts that focused upon Ticca and Lebuin. The pace seemed to slow in the latter half and when those two weren’t the focus the story drifted a little.

Thaddeus