One of my favorite elements of Thread Slivers (Golden Threads Trilogy) was the lead female character. Ticca is a very strong and driven female. She desperately wants the approval of her superiors and peers. Ticca’s need is to be the best she can be, and her long held and achieved wish is to be a Dagger and to fit in with her Dagger peers. She relishes sitting at the Dagger table in the Blue Dolphin though when she does, the other Daggers don’t sit with her. So much for acceptance at the cool table. None of that matters once the story gets going. Seems the life of a Dagger, or at least Ticca’s life, is as dangerous but less glamorous than she might have imagined when she’s hired to protect and escort Lebuin.

When Ticca, Lebuin and his servant Ditani come together, no one is quite sure who to trust which adds an element of excitement for the reader. When faced by the ancient evil, will one of them betray the others? We do get a bounty of internal dialogue to the point where it is a bit much but we don’t really get to know the characters as a result. As much as we know about the trio, much of who they are develops over the course of this story so that the ending feels less a cliffhanger and more like we’ve only read half of the first novel. Thread Slivers (Golden Threads Trilogy) (Volume 1) really feels as though it ends at an awkward place. It must be difficult for an author creating such a completely new world to self-edit and contain the facts necessary to lay out a cohesive world and strong characters. Artra’s writing style lends itself to a promise of an interesting future in, at times, laborious first novel.

If you are a lover of epic fantasy, you will find Thread Slivers (Golden Threads Trilogy) (Volume 1) by Leeland Artra a solid start to a promising series. The second novel in the series is out this month. ( )