Has anyone read
The Battle Mage by Peter Flannery? I'd never heard of the author until a different one of his books was recommended to someone else in another thread, but this is apparently a standalone fantasy with a more traditional classic story set up, and is pretty highly rated. That said, I've grown highly suspicious of fantasy ratings (I made a thread about it
here) and it has an unusual number of reviews on Amazon for a relative unknown (more reviews than Abercrombie's First Law, almost as many as
Lies of Locke Lamorra). This forum is pretty reliable for finding the best of the new and there's not a single mention of this book here despite its apparent success on Amazon (by comparison, Sullivan's
Theft of Swords was self published, took off on amazon and has been mentioned here multiple times yet has far fewer reviews than this book I never heard of).
This makes me wonder if this is like
Blood Song, another fantasy novel with off the charts reviews that nobody seems to have actually read and has me convinced there was some significant marketing weight/gamesmanship driving the superlative reviews. I'm also trying to convince myself not to believe the hype because I already have too many unread books on my shelf!