Gary F. Vanucci

The premise of "Wake the Dead: A Graphic Zombie Apocalypse Novel" encouraged me to purchase this book. The zombies are already roaming the earth when a young man comes across a young wolf pup being attacked by a group of zombies. The protagonist comes to his rescue and they become life-long friends and watch each others' back. The author continues to make his point through the story about a pack mentality and the need for the main character to be the "Alpha Male" and show no fear..

I thought it was a unique twist when the main character reaches the site of a former Renaissance Festival and finding the surviving employees dressed in character and used swords, spears, body armor, and other weapons of the time when fighting the zombies. .

The author has created edge of your seat suspense in many of the scenes as the protagonist and his wolf are surely trapped and won't survive the experience. On a down note, the author writes explicit sex scenes for the main character in which he beds four different gorgeous women. One may be okay in a pinch, but four? I believe sex scenes are out of place in a zombie story...they just don't fit! Additionally, I found the writing in the last quarter of the story to be rushed and sketchy. There were also too many typo's and added or missing words from the text. I would strongly recommend an editor to go over it.

If you are a zombie addict, then don't buy this book! The graphic sex descriptions are extremely distracting and turned me off to the story - surely, it would do the same for you.… (plus d'informations)

I used to play a lot of table-top roleplaying games in college and Covenant of the Faceless Knights by Gary Vanucci brought those memories back in force! I read the collection of short stories last year that give the background for a number of the characters in Covenant of the Faceless Knights, and I do recommend reading those. Like any table-top roleplaying game, there are a number of characters in the adventuring party and it is useful to have some context to keep all the names straight! While I enjoy a new high fantasy world to explore, I ended up being distracted by repetitive sentences, stereotypical adventurers and frequent point of view switches. If you are in the mood for a fun adventure, you might enjoy Covenant of the Faceless Knights.
Note: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
Goodreads | Amazon | LibraryThing



Title: Covenant of the Faceless Knights
Author: Gary Vanucci
Length: 341 pages
Genre-ish: High Fantasy
When a dangerous artifact goes missing from the Temple of The Shimmering One, the high priest in charge of the artifact’s protection realizes that he will not be able to retrieve the stolen relic without help. Calling upon Garius, the man who was once his own apprentice, Tiyarnon the High Priest enlists the aid of a man who is now an Inquisitor among the Order of the Faceless Knights. Garius, now a man of power and prestige, gathers a handful of allies to help complete his quest–but who among them is worthy of his trust? Aided by the mischievous Rose, a rogue among rogues, the stoic and blood thirsty Saeunn, and a promising but naïve elf named Elec, Garius hopes his training as one among the Faceless Knights has prepared him to keep his small company in check, let alone survive the trials to come. Garius must lead his band of allies into dark regions to recover the artifact before it falls into the hands of the evil being that once held it in order to ensure the continued safety of the Realm of Ashenclaw. – Goodreads
Strengths:
Covenant of the Faceless Knights took the interesting approach of giving us the heroes’ perspectives as well as the villain’s. While we know what the heroes are tromping around and doing, we also get hints as to the true evil that is awaiting them. This was important since there is a lot more going on in Covenant of the Faceless Knights than just what our heroes think they are dealing with.
I always appreciate a high fantasy that has strong female characters in addition (or instead of :D) the muscley and brilliant men. Covenant of the Faceless Knights has both clever, brave, and physically strong women, yey!
Weaknesses:
There were a lot of repetitive sentences in Covenant of the Faceless Knights that had me scratching my head and wondering if I was re-reading a paragraph by accident (I wasn’t, I checked ;-) ).
In addition to switching to the ultimate villain’s perspective, there were also switches to the thugs that the heroes would be facing. There was also switching between all the party members’ perspectives. This led to me being a bit overwhelmed with all of the storylines and perspectives that didn’t end up coming together in Covenant of the Faceless Knights anyway. Hopefully the next book brings it all together!
There were a lot of the typical high fantasy tropes going on with the strong but beautiful barbarian woman, the devious but also still beautiful rogue, the stoic but brave knight, etc.
Speaking of the beautiful women, the first half of Covenant of the Faceless Knights was filled with references to how beautiful the only two women in the adventuring party were. When we jumped to the two males’ perspective they just couldn’t stop noticing how beautiful the women were and apparently it was quite distracting to them. I would like the appearance of the female party members to not be such a hot topic, and why is it necessary for all female main characters to be stunningly beautiful? Oh and you romance fans will be disappointed because none of this beauty and distractedness translated into love, just staring.
Summary:
While Covenant of the Faceless Knights had an interesting premise, it suffered from many of the pitfalls in high fantasy. The characters seemed pulled straight from a table-top roleplaying guide and they just never had a chance to develop beyond that. The writing could have used a bit more polishing to make every word count and not give the reader deja vu. Despite that, I was left with a lot of questions. Why are the knights called Faceless? They certainly have faces if Garius is typical of them. What is going to happen with the big bad lich-dude? He was doing all this stuff, but he and our heroes never actually encountered each other. Hopefully these will be answered in the next book! If you are a fan of stories that remind you of Dungeons and Dragons, then you might quite enjoy Covenant of the Faceless Knights. Just be prepared for all the staring and beautiful women ;-).… (plus d'informations)

Wothlondia Rising by Gary Vanucci is a collection of six short stories set in the fantasy world of Wothlondia; between ogres, Faceless Knights, zombie hordes and demon containing amulets, there is plenty of adventure for each of the characters. The short stories are all prequel events to the next full novel Covenant of the Faceless Knights.
I was very excited to meet Gary Vanucci at GenCon this year and he was kind enough to provide me copies of his Beginnings Books, of which Wothlondia Rising is the first. While there were a few things that bothered me while I was reading Wothlondia Rising, I did genuinely enjoy the characters that we are introduced to in this anthology of short stories and am quite excited to see what happens in the full length novel, Covenant of the Faceless Knights!



Goodreads | Amazon
Title: Wothlondia Rising (Beginnings #1)
Author: Gary Vanucci
Pages: 3700 Kindle locations
Genre-ish: DnD-style high Fantasy
Rating: ★★★★☆- great characters, needs some editting
Setting: Wothlondia is a world that you could easily encounter in a table-top roleplaying game such as Dungeons and Dragons. There are elves, half-elves, ogres, half-ogres, humans, dragons, griffins, giant eagles, walking dead, etc. Magic and steel are both good ways for adventurers to defend themselves with plenty of potion brewing and praying to various gods thrown in for good measure.
Premise: Each of the short stories stands on its own and each is about one main character and a defining event(s) that happened to them. These range from a horde of zombies invading to someone being injured at a wedding to an amulet being stolen.
Strengths:
I really liked all of the characters that we encountered and their stories make me excited to see how they all come together in the full length novels.
While there are a lot of books set in these high fantasy worlds, I felt that Wothlondia Rising had some originality and expansion of typical ideas to keep it feeling fresh.
Yey for kick-butt female barbarians that don’t let their father keep them from kicking zombie butt!!
I really like the whole idea of a short story anthology to explain various stories that made characters who they are. It adds a nice depth.
A few days after finishing this anthology, the characters that were introduced keep springing to my mind and making me smile. Wothlondia Rising evidently succeeded in having some really likable characters :).
Weaknesses:
As with many indie books, Wothlondia Rising definitely would have shown brighter with another round of editing. Many sentences had redundant or awkward phrasing in addition to the typical (but a bit too frequent) grammatical typos.
Slightly along those lines as well, the main plot arches of several of the short stories was not traditional at all and so was rather jarring to realize, “wait, that’s the end, but there was no resolution!!” Especially in short stories I feel that at least most of the traditional plot arc needs to be respected so that the reader has some grounding.
There was a fairly frequent use of exclamation points in the narrator’s text, which just struck me as odd. Now I’m definitely a fan of exclamation points (see above), but it takes away from the narrator’s voice if they are used too frequently. You shouldn’t use exclamation points to make the reader understand something is exciting, you should use your text.
Similarly when it came to the narrator’s voice, there was a bit too much info-dumping for the sake of the reader’s understanding, to the point that I felt like the narrator was explaining parenthetically to me because the narrator didn’t think I’d get what was going on otherwise. It’s important to trust your readers to pick up on things without as much hand-holding; it keeps them on their toes ;-).
Summary:
While there were some really great characters and ideas in Wothlondia Rising, it just didn’t perform as well as it could have. I say it over and over, but it’s really important to get some good editing even for indie books, since otherwise those great ideas will get muddled. If you are a reader who doesn’t mind this frequent problem with indie books, and perhaps does some table-top gaming, then you should definitely pick up Wothlondia Rising. If, on the other hand, those types of mistakes would bother you greatly, perhaps just wait for another book by Vanucci to come out, since I’ve definitely found those things to improve in later books. Also I love table-top roleplaying. :D… (plus d'informations)

From my blog On Starships and Dragonwings

I used to play a lot of table-top roleplaying games in college and Covenant of the Faceless Knights by Gary Vanucci brought those memories back in force! I read the collection of short stories last year that give the background for a number of the characters in Covenant of the Faceless Knights, and I do recommend reading those. Like any table-top roleplaying game, there are a number of characters in the adventuring party and it is useful to have some context to keep all the names straight! While I enjoy a new high fantasy world to explore, I ended up being distracted by repetitive sentences, stereotypical adventurers and frequent point of view switches. If you are in the mood for a fun adventure, you might enjoy Covenant of the Faceless Knights.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Covenant of the Faceless Knights
Author: Gary Vanucci
Length: 341 pages
Genre-ish: High Fantasy
Rating: ★★☆☆☆- fun premise, not compelling

Strengths:

Covenant of the Faceless Knights took the interesting approach of giving us the heroes' perspectives as well as the villain's. While we know what the heroes are tromping around and doing, we also get hints as to the true evil that is awaiting them. This was important since there is a lot more going on in Covenant of the Faceless Knights than just what our heroes think they are dealing with.
I always appreciate a high fantasy that has strong female characters in addition (or instead of :D) the muscley and brilliant men. Covenant of the Faceless Knights has both clever, brave, and physically strong women, yey!

Weaknesses:

There were a lot of repetitive sentences in Covenant of the Faceless Knights that had me scratching my head and wondering if I was re-reading a paragraph by accident (I wasn't, I checked ;-) ).
In addition to switching to the ultimate villain's perspective, there were also switches to the thugs that the heroes would be facing. There was also switching between all the party members' perspectives. This led to me being a bit overwhelmed with all of the storylines and perspectives that didn't end up coming together in Covenant of the Faceless Knights anyway. Hopefully the next book brings it all together!
There were a lot of the typical high fantasy tropes going on with the strong but beautiful barbarian woman, the devious but also still beautiful rogue, the stoic but brave knight, etc.
Speaking of the beautiful women, the first half of Covenant of the Faceless Knights was filled with references to how beautiful the only two women in the adventuring party were. When we jumped to the two males' perspective they just couldn't stop noticing how beautiful the women were and apparently it was quite distracting to them. I would like the appearance of the female party members to not be such a hot topic, and why is it necessary for all female main characters to be stunningly beautiful? Oh and you romance fans will be disappointed because none of this beauty and distractedness translated into love, just staring.

Summary:

While Covenant of the Faceless Knights had an interesting premise, it suffered from many of the pitfalls in high fantasy. The characters seemed pulled straight from a table-top roleplaying guide and they just never had a chance to develop beyond that. The writing could have used a bit more polishing to make every word count and not give the reader deja vu. Despite that, I was left with a lot of questions. Why are the knights called Faceless? They certainly have faces if Garius is typical of them. What is going to happen with the big bad lich-dude? He was doing all this stuff, but he and our heroes never actually encountered each other. Hopefully these will be answered in the next book! If you are a fan of stories that remind you of Dungeons and Dragons, then you might quite enjoy Covenant of the Faceless Knights. Just be prepared for all the staring and beautiful women ;-).… (plus d'informations)