Killing Tree

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

When your day goes to hell and you find yourself kidnapped, strung up from a magical tree, and left to bleed out, what do you do next? Asking for a friend.

Fortunately, Riordan Kincaid is a tough, gives-no-fucks honey badger shifter. Unfortunately, now that he's survived the first attempt, a death mage and their cult are determined to finish the job by whatever means necessary, pursuing Riordan across the wilds of rural Michigan.

Ghosts and spirits are outside of his specialty, and heaven help him if he has to cast actual spells, but Riordan isn't going to make this easy on his enemies. Even if that means breaking his long exile, turning to the local shifter community for help, and dealing with a bureaucratic department of mages. And don't even get him started on getting licked by a damn spirit bear.

Now he just needs to figure out what will kill him first: his enemies, his past, or his own attempts at using magic? Or will Riordan beat the odds and prove that honey badgers really are that hard to kill? If so, what will he do with a life once hung upon a tree that's more than a tree?

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2021
Author: Fiona Fair

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.6/ 5.0
Followers: 156
Views: 179,040

Reviews

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Community Reviews(7)

biggest kusa out thereRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
When the characters were under stress, I felt that as well. Small moments built emotions that accompanied the narrative in a way I haven't read in a while.
Characters were fleshed out enough that I felt intrigue and a connection to their motivations, however fleeting, and personalities. The author revealed enough to left me wondering and wanting more.
Really good!
AlexaLeeRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Immediately, we are plunged into Riordan’s world. Fiona’s masterful world building allows the reader to get a great insight into Riordan’s current experiences as well as his past whilst leaving you interested to know more.
The opening is extremely strong and well written, giving you just enough information to understand what is going on but making you constantly want to read more.
The story is somewhat dark and gruesome with fairly graphic descriptions of injuries but it’s extremely well done and believable.
The entire story (that I have read so far) is very well written and easy to follow. Fiona’s writing style is impeccable and obviously polished. The pacing was fast and very fitting.
There were no noticeable spelling or grammar issues but instead the use of language is fantastic. The descriptions were graphic, painting a clear picture of the world.
The characters are very interesting. This far, only Riordan has been fully developed however the character is fantastically written. His background and mental processes are portrayed so well which makes him an extremely believable character. Despite his experiences, he’s still (at the heart of it) a good person. This is clear in his immediate care for Daniel and it really endeared me to his character.
Overall, I think this is a fantastically written piece and I’m absolutely going to continue reading it.
PotassiumRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This is not among the sea of LITRPGs, Xianxia, Isekais and related that make the bulk of the sories in RR, so I was even more surprised by the quality of this story. An interestingly built world, that we learned about not from infodumps but from the natural flow of the story. Excellent grammar, compelling chacters, an well built plot. I recomed this story to all. Given that we seem to be approaching the climax of this arc, I would also be very interested in continuations of this story and, perhaps, other stories in this well-crafted world
Tanner_1000Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I was absentmindedly checking the update sections as usual hoping to see my few select novels I favor when I stumbled onto this story. I notice this trend with modern world fantasy novels that they tend to progress the story slow or have a very fast development. Thankfully, this story does a balance of it where everything is sequenced fluidly. Plus, the grammar seems to be room with not much mistakes leaving it very easy to read and the right amount of detail placed into descriptions.
Furthermore, the main character traits seem to be as a angry, skilled, curious and yet intelligent with what they do; which fits the predicament they are in. At first I thought the main character would progesss into a fury hating spiteful person, but you can really see the character growth and this is something that is vital in novels. If you get the character repeating the same mindset, ideas and actions, the story starts to become monotone and boring; a static character. Props to the author.
Overall, I am very satisfied with the novel and the style score being a nice balance in fantasy and the modern world. Especially on how straightforward the magic system is being introduced and explained as the story is being progressed. I have high hopes for this novel and will continue to read it.
K.M. KeaneRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Riordan has a hell of a day (and the days after that), and it's a thrill to read. This story has a really interesting premise and especially a strong start that drew me immediately inside the story.
Story: The story is somewhere between a nightmarish action and a mystical adventure, following Riordan, a shifter who starts the story with a stroke of really bad luck, and ends up trying to fight himself out of all the trouble.
The story starts really strong, almost straight to the deep end of Riordan's bad day. I was thrilled when I started reading the story. It instantly pulled me in, not giving me much room to breathe before everything started going wrong. I really enjoyed that. It was such a thrill that after the starting chapters, the tension seemed to flatten. After the exhilarating start, I had a hard time trying to get into the rhythm again. The author had brought everything so close to me in the beginning, that I felt kind of estranged from what was happening after that, just following Riordan and Daniel without actually being as inside in the story as I was before. Luckily the tension picked up again later on after some chapters.
I really liked how the author described and handled the subjects of magic, the killing tree, shifters, and death mages. Everything was well thought-out and really interesting. I especially enjoyed the shifters, and that Riordan was a honey badger.
Style: The pacing of the story felt really good most of the time. There were just some places that I felt it was slightly dragging, but nothing that stopped me from enjoying it. What I really liked about the author's style, was how they described everything so well and thoroughly. It made me get fully immersed in the story. The character descriptions were also really good, giving me instantly a sense of what they looked like, their personalities, and how they acted. The characters were made really vivid just by the descriptions alone.
The author's style pulled me in really well. It's easy to
ANCTRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
The Killing Tree feels to me to be in the same vein of Urban Fantasy as Dresden Files, where a good man gets beat over and over while pursuing "doing the right thing." Our guy Riordan is a shifter that has gotten in the middle of doings of a death cult and I am enjoying the ride. Over all it has been a great experiance.
Style: The author has a great command of language and clear control of their vision. Dialog and thoughts are clear when they begin and end. Plays with worlds, but never becomes to poetic to be confusing.
Story: The plot is a little standard set up, but the author sets it up well. I'm not the biggest fan of urban fantasy, but loving how it is playing out. The nature of how magic plays a part is well threaded through out the story as to never feel like an explantion dump. How shifters work in this world is straight up neat.
Grammar: It is clear to me the author knows how to edit their own work. There are rarely any issues where a missing word or a fuzzy sentence comes up. When does it is normally pretty easy to figure out the missing word or the intentions the sentence was trying to convey.
Character: Riordan is an interesting character and the author is particularly brilliant at showing how compentent the man is without becoming a superman/macgyver/woodsman extreme. The antigontist that have been show are clearly normal people with mixed morality and I look forward to seeing how it all plays out with them. The only negitive I can think of, is there are an offputting moments with the main character where for a man of his background that makes him seem overly vulernable. It isn't enough to ruin the story, but takes me out of the story at times. Perhaps once I know more of his background it will be clear, but I would expect rougher skin for a drifter, former mercenary.
To summarise, read the story! It's good
MarytheGorgonRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
I really liked this story. It isn't the typical type of book I would read on my own, but I'm glad I read this one. I enjoyed the fact we don't have some overpowered main character to follow and suspend our disbelief with.
The author works hard to make you feel every attack and wound the main character has. You can tell he's harmed from the events of the story so far and that it's not only affecting him mentally but physically.
I do find the character of Daniel just there, but then again he is a side character and they don't have to be super advanced and open. So far the story has just started so there isn't too much I can say besides that it is good so far. I like the kidnapping plot and how Daniel struggles to hang onto life as our MC tries to get away in his damaged state.
The shifter aspect isn't super heavy but I love when the MC utilizes it. Right now there is magical elements being slowly weeded in along with the survival parts. I have to say I don't prefer one over the other, they mix together perfectly for a wonderful story.
The narration is really nice and easy to immerse yourself in though the "tree and magic metaphor" part confused me and I had to reread it a few times.