Reading Paternus: Wrath of the Gods, is like being tossed out of a plane, which is on fire, into a wide, fast running river without a raft. It flows over and around you like water. You must just go with the flow. Readers are helpless in the current as it changes quickly from the pressures of the forces that created it. It rushes along strongly, and it reveals something surprising, or life threatening at every bend. You can’t find a calm spot to cling to much less crawl out from.
Readers will be swept up in the relentless pace of Paternus Wrath of Gods and finding a way to put it down is going to be a challenge. This book picks up right where the first left us and is simply a pleasure to read.
The awe inspired by of the immense age and power of the Firstborn and the Pater himself is keenly felt by the two youngest protagonists and reader alike. As they discover their own strengths and dangerous weaknesses, we learn more of the mind-boggling existences of the ancient entities they find themselves surrounded by. The deep mythologies of millennia, from every race of mankind which has ever existed, is deep and very broad. Those who love mythology and folklore will find familiar figures and discover new ones all through this book, their true faces revealing their heritage of the All-father and the sometimes terrifying aspects of their ancient mothers.
You cannot help being emotionally hooked into each character and every loss they have suffered, every atrocity they witness or commit, every staggeringly powerful attack against them which leaves them more angry, afraid, stunned, and grieving for their losses.
Another cliffhanger ahead. You have been warned. This is the best kind, you know it’s coming and you may actually enjoy it, though it’ll leave you desperate for more. You know what’s to come is big on a cosmic scale and you wouldn’t trade a minute of the ride that brought you this far. The true mark of a good epic fantasy.
Paternus is action packed and the research is a marvel. I remain astounded by its relentless flow of action and information. The descriptions of the wide range of characters, their offspring, and their origins are highly imagined. Their interactions with one another, whether in the present or in the past, add to the ancient myths, and on occasion relieve them of some common misconceptions. The dialogue is entertaining with laugh out loud moments but will still blindside you and leave you blinking back tears so you can see to read. A very strong follow-up to Paternus: Rise of the Gods.
As the Firstborn Deva gather to fight an ancient and evil foe once again, their battles against the evil Asura lay waste not only on our our earth, but many of its existing world versions in other astral planes. The cruel Asura use both the living and dead in their long-planned war for dominance, bringing back horrors thought long perished. Worlds are burning and the dwindling ranks of the Deva unite behind the Pater to take the battle to the doorstep of their enemy. The stakes couldn’t be any higher.
Also by Dyrk Ashton: Beserker” is a stand-alone short story framed as a “missing chapter” from Paternus, It tells of the time when one of the characters finally met his father, many centuries ago…
With the little humans dying around him, many at his own hands, Bödvar remembers craving with all his heart that vibrant thrill of life, sheer horror, excruciating agony, that genuine sense of impending doom. Then, in that very battle, his wish was nearly granted. A Scyth leader cried out, pointing off to the east. On the horizon, riding out of the pallid blotch of a weak watery sun, Bödvar saw a figure bedecked in a gleaming copper breastplate, racing toward them on an enormous pale-gray stallion. The beating of Bödvar’s heart nearly ceased. It was his father, he knew immediately, and the steed he rode the fiercest “horse” in all the worlds, the dreaded Sleipnir…
About the Author: Dyrk Ashton was born in Athens (Ohio, not Greece), on a chilly Halloween morning. He whiled away his adolescent years and teens in cornfields, woods, rivers, ditches and haymows, climbing trees, running along barn beams, riding, wrestling, soccering, fighting BB gun wars, reading Stuart Little, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, everything Verne, London, Kipling, White, Lewis, Doyle, Burroughs, Poe, Howard, Fleming, Lovecraft, Tolkein, Zelazny, and generally ignoring school — though he somehow managed excellent grades (except in Algebra, of course).
Grimmedian 