Dark Oak by Jacob Sannox – 3.5 Star Book Review

Humanity has finally defeated the Dark Lord, but Morrick fought on the wrong side. Though he was a slave, he is branded a traitor and must earn the trust of new lords in order to return to his family – if they are still alive…

Welcome to one of the November 22nd stops on the blog tour for Dark Oak by Jacob Sannox with Storytellers on Tour. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, and author guest posts & interviews! More on that at the end of this post.

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About the Book

Dark Oak
Dark Oak Book One
by Jacob Sannox

Print/eBook
Published 15 May 2017
Page Count: 305

Audiobook
Published 27 December 2018
Narrator: Nigel Peever
Length: 12 hours and 59 minutes

Genre: Dark Epic Fantasy
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Humanity has finally defeated the Dark Lord, but Morrick fought on the wrong side.

Though he was a slave, he is branded a traitor and must earn the trust of new lords in order to return to his family – if they are still alive.

Now that their common enemy is dead, the nobles begin to forget old loyalties, and Queen Cathryn’s realm looks set to plunge into war once more. But there are older and more terrible powers dwelling within the forest, and when they are awakened, Morrick will decide who lives or dies.

An SPFBO 2018 semi-finalist.

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My Review

My Rating: 3.5 Stars
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I was granted complimentary eBook access to Dark Oak by Jacob Sannox as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Storytellers on Tour. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

I’m writing this review 3 (4?) days after reading the book and I genuinely can’t remember now if I wanted to rate it a 3 or a 4 while I was reading, so we’re going to call it a 3.5 on my blog and then be generous and round up to 4 on Goodreads and retail sites. Okay? Good, glad we agree.

The good: This book was a fun, easy read with a classic high fantasy feel to it and an interesting premise. I genuinely liked Morrick, both as a character in general and as a leader, and I was with him all the way! I would be interested in reading a sequel, so long as it gave me more Morrick in the spotlight. I love the integration of dryad lore, too! I didn’t expect the story to go that route, but I can’t fault it either, and that aspect of the plot just makes me all the more hungry for more of Morrick’s story.

The bad: While Morrick is a great leader and a well-rounded character, the men following him are not. This group turns their coats this way and that at Morrick’s guidance and I really didn’t understand why. Early on it made sense, they were prisoners of war and he was presenting a possible best-case scenario. As the story and wars go on, though, I expected half of them to get apathetic about it all and desert. Morrick’s good, but he’s not THAT good. I also felt like the pacing in the latter third is not quite there. There are plot elements in the end that go in an ending but somehow I didn’t feel like the book was ready to end.

Overall this is a very interesting, unique book and I’m interested to see what the second instalment in this series will be like!

About the Author

Jacob Sannox is a 37 year old writer from the sunny climes of Bedfordshire, England. In his spare time he is generally writing, thinking about writing or berating himself for not writing.

He loves to play the acoustic guitar, but wishes he was better at it, and he has recently taken up Dungeons & Dragons. This is dangerous, as he has a propensity for disappearing into fantasy worlds. Nobody saw Jacob Sannox between 2000 and 2010, during which time he was LARPing.

Do not judge him.

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