"A Cast of Stones" by Patrick W. Carr

This book's cover does it no favors.

Seriously, it looks dark and creepy. And also, weirdly, kind of low-effort. I actually put off reading it for a while because the cover pushed me away so much. (Yeah, I know, don't judge a book by its cover and all that, but on some level you're kind of supposed to. That's the point of the cover. If the cover played no part in people's assessment of a book, then there's no real reason aside from "it looks pretty" for books to have cover art at all.)

Okay, mini-rant over. Despite what the cover would seem to indicate, this book is actually pretty good.

Plot summary: In a world where casting lots to decide things actually works, the king is dying without an heir. So we have to pick a new one, or else the magic barrier protecting the kingdom from the demons will fall apart and the kingdom will get overrun by demons. And because casting lots to decide things actually works, that's how we're going to do it. Also there's Fantasy Christianity involved.

Except |the demons don't want us to choose a new king, because they want the magic barrier to fall apart so they can overrun the kingdom|. At least, I'm pretty sure that's who's behind all the problems we keep having.

I've noticed (from my incredibly large sample size of exactly two) that whenever you have Fantasy Christianity, things tend to be named in some sort of butchered approximation of Latin. Granted, I've only encountered Fantasy Christianity twice, in this and in Deathless Beast, so I may be missing the vast array of Fantasy Christianity that's named in a butchered approximation of Swedish or Swahili or something. But the Latin is probably thanks to the Roman Catholics and their historical insistence on Latin for everything.

(Granted, most of my knowledge of Roman Catholicism dates to roughly the sixteenth century, so they may have changed significantly since them.)

I really liked that the main character |isn't the Chosen One|. That honor goes to the side character who could have been really annoying if he were actually annoying at all, and who's still slightly residually annoying because the main character is envious of him.

And speaking of our main character, he has issues. Mainly alcoholism. I'm not an alcoholic myself, and I don't know any, so I can't speak to how accurate the portrayal is. He's also not instantly good at everything (he is, in fact, bad at most of things), but he gets better at some of them after a good training montage or two.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for alcohol abuse and fantasy violence. Also some veiled sexual references, but those are veiled, as they should be.

4 stars. 

(Endnote: This is the book that inspired my previous post.)