The Bite on the Line (Bytarend Book 1)
Fantasy as fast as any thriller.
Clinging to the bar running along the front of the platform, Sergeant Osric has a lot of time to think about how he got there. About how he’s shooting through a forest on a rocket powered railcar. About how a grinning thief is clinging to the same bar beside him. Most of all, though, about how he’s heading for Bytarend; a town no-one has heard from in almost a hundred years. There has to be a reasonable explanation for their silence, after all. Osric tries to think of a reason that doesn’t end in his horrible death…
… he can’t come up with one.
The Bite on the Line is the first book in the Bytarend series. Fast-paced fantasy with plenty of humour along the way.
The Bite on the Line will grip you until the final page. Grab a copy today!
Contains a special offer to get the second book in the series for free by joining the author’s mailing list!
Interview with the Author
Q – What makes the Bytarend books so special?
A – I set out to create a series that combines everything I love in fantasy. I’ve never been a fan of slow moving fantasy books, I prefer a little bit more action and adventure in my stories. At the same time, I love banter between characters. I’m a big fan of the biting comments characters can make to one another as they face down danger. Those kinds of books aren’t all that common. It’s fairly rare to find fast-moving action and comedy in the fantasy genre. So I set out to write a series that I would want to read.
Q – There are a lot of characters in these books?
A – There sure are. In the first book, we follow Tondbert’s coming of age, dealing with his loss. At the same time, Osric is out for a kind of justice he’s having trouble finding in a world ruled by nobles. The rest of the books in the series follow more characters, quite a lot of whom are women. I love strong female lead characters in books, so that was something else I wanted to make sure of. Along with some romance, for good measure. In the six books, I think I’ve pulled in every type of character I could think of.
Tondbert, for example, is dark-skinned because I hadn’t read many (or any) books with black main characters. It made no sense to me that fantasy characters always seem to be Caucasian. Since it’s a fantasy setting, I saw no reason not to add a bit of diversity.
Q – Should the books be read in order?
A – While I’ve tried to setup each book so it can be read individually, I’d recommend reading them in order. Each books tells its own story, but the events of one do affect the next. So I’d recommend:
– The Bite on the Line
– The Bite of Minds
– The Bite of Death
– The Bite of Forest Dark
– The Bite of Rust
– The Bite of a King
Q – Why should readers give these books a try?
A – The Bytarend books are ideal for anyone who wants to try some fast-moving, action-oriented fantasy. I’ve had emails from readers saying they don’t normally read fantasy, but they loved these books. With the first one on special offer, there’s no reason not to give it a go.
Thanks for reading!
easy read,
There’s a handful of errors that need ironing out, often sentences with words missing and some punctuation issues. I did find the overuse of the word ‘loomed’ annoying and the use of ‘span’ which is a measurement of distance instead of ‘spun’. But the word that annoyed the heck out of me was the none-word ‘gotten’ which does not exist in English language usage, the past participle of get is got, the use of this often American English word is popping up far too often with new writers. I’m surprised the author’s writing group didn’t point this out to him as he credits them with help and advice.
I liked the characterisation within the book and the author’s ability to keep the dialogue fresh and the thread of the story intact, however I did think chapter one was a non entity as it gave us information that was not relevant to the actual story and set up a different story that went nowhere.
I did feel let down by the last chapter as the story seemed to end abruptly, it was almost one of those, ‘he woke up and it was all a dream’ endings.
On the whole I did like this book, but marked it down from four stars to three for the use of the word ‘gotten’.
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|gripping read,
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|A real page turner with lots of humour,
The characters are very real, most of them human; apart from, of course the life leeches, the lifeless, the dark mages, the various were-animals and the strange creatures in the forest. You’ll have to trust me on this one, the humans are very human even if they sometimes have difficulty staying that way! Having read this first book in the series, I wasted no time in ordering books 2 and 3.
I can highly recommend this book and feel sure that once you’ve read it, you too will want to carry on with the series.
This review is based upon a free copy which I received from the author.
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