(Thanks for the ARC Rob!)

I am Claihed.

It's all been building to this. With his previous entries Tanns Last Stand and A Path of Blades, R.E. Sanders brings us the first in his new epic fantasy series.

Now your first book in a fantasy series tends to go down a fairly well trodden path. A young hero, normally a farm boy, must go from A to B to get X to stop the evil dark Y from doing Z. Then book 2 onwards is when you get into the unique meaty stuff.

Well Demon's Tear just isn't that kind of book; If anything it has an anti-hero's journey. We have Eain, a disgraced soldier looking to escape his failure who unfortunately finds danger more often than one would want.

We have Ellyah and Natsja, two thieves who have managed to get their hands on a blood red ruby; The Demon's Tear, pursued by its relentless owners through a treacherous land.

Their POVs happen pretty much entirely independent of one another, and bring very different styles and stakes to the table.

In all this, you have a huge fantasy world with pepperings of different races, creeds and political intrigue. The World is doing its own thing while our MCs are doing theirs. Jantakai feels alive and takes central stage as its own character.

Sanders greatest strength is in his fight scenes. He writes them with such accuracy as if he was once a valiant Knight himself. Each swing of a sentence strikes with precision, and the fight scenes never over stay their welcome.

While there are big world ending stakes hinted to, DT's drama is focused almost exclusively on its characters, how they interplay with each other, with a key theme of 'regret' shadowing the entire journey.

The ending teases bigger stakes, bigger swords and bigger characters. I am excited to see them all. With Demon's Tear, Sanders has solidified himself as one to watch (and read) in the indie SFF arena.3 s Sam5 1 follower

Sanders returns to the world of Tann's Last Stand and A Path Of Blades.

I love the way the story is initially introduced through the viewpoints of a number of different characters, many of whom become key players throughout the book. As ever, Sanders' descriptive prose is evocative without being overly flowery, and there were several moments where I genuinely laughed out loud.

Sanders obviously knows his sword-fighting and there are numerous exciting fight scenes, but there's a real heart to this book as well. The characters are well-written and I found myself getting very involved; I was really rooting for some and looking forward to their chapters while also finding one of the other characters quite irritating (as I suspect the author intended!). Sanders doesn't limit himself to the usual fantasy character tropes but has included a neurodivergent character as well as one who's suffered from a terrible personal loss, a usually taboo issue that the author deals with sensitively and well.

I really enjoyed this book and I'm very much looking forward to seeing what happens in the sequel.

I was provided a copy of this book as an ARC reader interested in fantasy, and have received no other compensation or encouragement for this review. My comments and opinions are my own.3 s Nathan Fantasy Reviews111 23

The tl;dr: Reminiscent of those classic fantasy epics while still feeling fresh, Demon's Tear is a book with a massive scale with impending war, elves, dwarves, magical jewels, necromancy, political strife, heists, and more. It is everything epic fantasy readers love lovingly tied together in a monster of a novel. The world is well-developed and lived in, and the characters shine through the epic qualities of the book. Due to its epic nature the actual overarching plot fails to really shine through, but Sanders is definitely planting a lot of plot seeds to harvest in future books!

My full review: 

There have been several conversations recently about epic fantasy being "dead", and while this may have some truth of it in traditional publishing, epic fantasy is alive and kicking in indie spaces. Demon's Tear is another compelling and chonky book with a massively epic scale, numerous POV characters, magical and deadly objects, elves, dwarves, thieves, and rogues. Demon's Tear reads as a fresh, modern book that will delight fans of The Wheel of Time and other classic epics, without the sluggish pacing.

with many epic fantasies, writing a quick summary of this book is nearly impossible. There is brewing hostility between two nations in an uneasy cold war, two young thieves who steal a magical jewel, and a lot of bad guys who are after them. The plot is much better and much more intricate than what I am saying here, but suffice it to say that if you a bit of politics, a splash of battle scenes, a dash of evil mages, and a sprinkle of good old heist thievery, this book will delight you in spades.

With this massive epics with multiple storylines, I tend to find that a lot of the whether I the book falls to the details. All epic fantasies hit similar-ish plot beats, so it comes down to how immersed in the world, characters, and plot I feel. Luckily, most of the elements of Demon's Tear just work so well.

Demon's Tear took me a minute to warm up to. The prologue/first chapter didn't immediately grab me because we were introduced to a slew of new characters (including a supporting character having nearly the same name as the main character) doing not-so-interesting things. Very quickly, however, the book finds its rhythm, opening into a fantasy world that is fully fleshed out and lived in. Demon's Tear follows the modern trend in epic fantasy of not spelling out every little detail about the world to you (you won't get descriptions of every cultural group's preferences for clothing, food, etc.), but this is a world with a deep history and long-standing sociopolitical and inter-species relationships. When we get glimpses of different nations and cultures, small details slowly emerge that enrichen and liven up the reading experience. It has been a long time since I have read a book that has elicited the same feelings as the world of the 80s and 90s have, but Demon's Tear definitely did that.

The book's locations even work really well on the more micro-level. Much of the second half of the book takes place in a single city that immediately has its own unique character and internal politics. It is kind of an adult, serious Rogueport from Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door - a city of underground crime that controls the city's inner workings. This book will utterly sweep you away into another world.

The worldbuilding is definitely helped out by the characters in this book. There are a lot of characters in Demon's Tear (would it be epic fantasy without them?), but un most other books of this scale I never had a hard time remembering who everyone was. Each character has their own distinct arc and personality, and even the POV characters with relatively small "onscreen" time (including one necromancer) are instantly recognizable. Sanders expertly makes sure there are enough characters for the epic scale he is going for in Demon's Tear without ever feeling he is just adding extraneous characters for the heck of it. The book is both huge in scale, while never forgetting the more human and intimate scale that emotionally engage the reader.

I also really d how Sanders organized the book, which made me connect with the characters even more. Rather than cycling through the POV characters at a fairly regular rate, he divides the chapters in several core sections. Each section focuses on one major storyline, and only cycles through the POV characters directly related to that storyline. This means that you spend a lot of time with a small set of characters with a small-ish goal before you rotate out (and then they'll rotate back in later in the book). This made the characters instantly more memorable, and I much preferred to this more common way of just instantly rotating between all of the characters.

The one major thing that let me down in this book is that even by the end the overarching plot is still pretty hazy and fuzzy. The importance of the titular "demon's tear" and where the story is going is remains nebulous...and in a bad way. many readers, I love the thrill of the unknown and being surprised by where a story is taking me - but only if I am comfortably aware what the overarching stakes are for the characters. Sanders falls a bit into the epic fantasy trap of throwing a lot of balls in the air, but not making it clear what this specific story is really about. A deadly gem, an impeding war, and thieves on the run are all fantastic and well-realized elements to this book, but they never clearly gel together to an overarching story, even when all of the main characters come together in the same physical place by the end of the book. I'm still excited to dive into book two whenever it comes out because of the emotional connections I've made with these wonderful characters, but I'm not necessarily excited for what happens next because I don't know what I should be looking forward to (if that makes sense).

But this doesn't take away from the fact that this was an absolute blast of an epic fantasy experience, and fans clamoring for that feeling of those massive epics should definitely pick this one up.4 s FantasyBookNerd412 76

War, cursed gems, thieves and a demon lord all make an appearance in R.E. Sander’s new book Demon’s Tear.

Eain has been training as a warrior since he was a child, but when war comes, disaster strikes and he finds himself in a foreign land, fleeing from the land he knows and loves.

Ellyah, along with her friend Nastja and strange companion Luara have just done the heist of the century. Stealing a mysterious red jewel, Ellyah hopes that the when she fences it, she will be lifted from the clutches of poverty and never have to steal again. What she doesn’t know is that dark forces are aware of the jewel and have designs on it.

In a frantic race to sell the jewel and escape from the clutches of the gangs who are chasing them, Ellyah and co end up in the crime infested city of Ben Gedrin.
Demon’s Tear is the first instalment in The Jantakai Saga, an epic fantasy set in the Lands of the Twin Swords. The book is split into two points of view, but rather than alternating to each character after a chapter or two, it is split into novelette components, with each part centring on either of the two main characters.

To be fair, this works rather well as you get an elongated stint with each of the characters until the end of their section.

The book is a solid introduction to the world, especially for a new reader. However, the one thing that I found a little difficult was the initial introduction. There is a lot of opening world building that means that the reader has to familiarise themselves with various aspects of the world, which I felt hampered the pace a little at first and whilst it sets the scene, I thought it broke the initial pace of the book.

As usual when you have a multi – pov led book, you do tend to gravitate towards certain characters, and I must admit that my favourites were Ellyah and Nastja, despite their faults.

In addition to this, Sanders gives a different perspective on familiar fantasy races and I d how he had subverted them to make them very individual to the world, particularly Elves who he gave a totally upended view, and rather than them being the usual wispy beings that readers are generally familiar with they are quite muscular and wild.

On the whole though, I enjoyed the book, and d the idea that whilst there are certain fantasy tropes present, they are not relied upon and the decisions that the characters make themselves impact on the outcomes rather than it being a pre-ordained destiny. Claire2 1 follower

Path of Blades and Tann's Last Stand set the scene, now Demon's Tear fully immerses the reader in the Jantakai, the land of the Twin Swords. It's a strange yet familiar world, where the main characters make their own choices without being driven by destiny.
It's also just the start of an epic saga. We meet people struggling with honour, fear, greed, guilt. Friendships and loyalties are tested. An underlying power weaves through the narrative.
The story is a character-driven great read, whether you evocative landscapes or technical swordplay. The chapter heading pictures are beautifully drawn and hint at the contents with. Many of the usual fantasy tropes have been omitted, making the characters seem more real. You can see them in your friends around you, be they athletic, driven, funny, neurodiverse, annoying, faithful, sneaky, or just trying to get along in life when it appears that their world has been shattered.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, laughing out loud at moments while getting genuinely concerned for the main characters at times.
Another reviewer wrote that it was Guardians of the Galaxy if written by Bernard Cornwell. I second that. Richard Patterson1 review

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