Love Book Tours | Mountain of Souls | Marcus Lee

 

Today I join Love Book Tours to talk about Marcus Lee's new book, The Mountain of Souls.

It's a great pleasure to welcome Marcus Lee back to Fantasy Book Nerd as I really enjoyed his previous trilogy, The Gifted & the Cursed.

The Mountain of Souls is the start of the new trilogy The Chosen which was released on 19 February 2023. 

If your life hung by a thread, how far would you go, and what lines would you cross, simply to survive?

When Malina is sold at an auction block, she fears life will take a turn for the worse.

But even her darkest nightmares are nothing compared to the reality of what she faces when she's delivered to the Mountain of Souls.

Thrust into a brutal selection process where failure means death, Malina must train and fight not only to survive but to prove herself worthy to serve.

The risks are deadly, but if she succeeds, the rewards are beyond measure, and a destiny unlike any other awaits as one of The Chosen.

The Chosen. A thrilling and intricately spun Epic Fantasy that weaves a relentless fight for survival into a tapestry full of conquest, deception, magic, and an ancient prophecy that will determine the fate of the human race.

The Mountain of Souls is the start of the gripping new trilogy by Marcus Lee.

Now as soon as I heard about this one, I had to read it as I really enjoyed Marcus Lee's previous trilogy.

The story centres around a young girl Malina who is thrust into the world of a secret cult that foretells the return of The Once and Future King. In preparation for the return of this mysterious figure, the cult is building an army of assassins.

This book surprised me. From the moment the story begins, this book is brutal. When we originally meet Malina, we meet her after she has been sold into a harsh and disorientating situation which leads to only the strongest surviving the disorientation of the Saw like opening.

The children are then conditioned and brainwashed to accept their roles as elite killers, paving the way for the Once and Future King.

The story told through Malina's eyes brings the violence and the disorientation of the situation up close and as we move through the story we learn the intentions of the cult.

I have to say that there were many times this book did actually surprise me, and I have to be quite frank I was surprised at the places that it goes to. There were a few times I was thinking there's no way he's going to go there. And lo and behold, he does!

The story asks some interesting questions, particularly around the use of child soldiers in war and their indoctrination into regimes to be used as weapons. The process of depersonalisation and conditioning of the children is pretty horrifying, and how the children accept brutality as an everyday occurrence kinda got under my skin a little if I am honest.

However, whilst being quite dark in its content, the book is written really well. You are never sure which side Malina is on and whether her and her compatriots are working for light or for dark as Marcus Lee keeps this hidden.

For most of the story, the setting is quite claustrophobic as the main bulk of the book takes place in a single setting. However, the story gradually opens up as we see more of the island and more of the world.

This is where the story starts to take off as we see more of the plans and aims of the secret group actually are.

Now, I have tried to keep plot points a little vague as the best way of going into this book is going in blind and letting the story unfold as things become clearer.

The rest of the trilogy has been released shortly after the initial book and I will definitely read the rest as I want to see where the story leads next.