I read this novella for the indie novella competition, SFINCS. The following review is my own personal opinion as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole. Find out more about the competition here and my team, The WIPs, here, and read all my reviews for the competition here!
The Weaver and the Wyrm by Ben Galley is a somewhat dark but also hopeful fantasy adventure about a down-on-his-luck mage sent by his new employer to retrieve a dangerous magical weapon that turns out to be something entirely different than he expected. The novella connects to the author’s main series, Emaneska, which contains many novels and novellas, but in its roots, can be read as a standalone.
Farden is a Written, a magic-user with special tattoos from which he sources his powers. After some unfortunate events in the capital, he asked for a mission far from everyone who would know him, and after a trying journey at sea, ends up in gray and bleak Albion in the servitude of the strange leader of the Arkabbey there, Durnus Glassren. The reclusive scholar immediately has a mission for him: visit a magick market and bid for an artifact that is about to cause problems in the area. Deal with it, diplomatically, the order comes. But of course, Farden’s business will end up everything but diplomatic. After an encounter with the strange, sort of a mafia-boss Weaver then gaining the magical weapon that is more wild animal than object, the mage quickly finds himself in a right mess of a situation.
I found the novella’s writing style, not counting some smaller editing hiccups and confusion in the more descriptive parts, very easy to read, and I was able to quickly orient and immerse myself in the large-scale setting as well. Farden was a relatable main character, and I really liked the community he discovered with the venomous magical animal, the lyndwyrm, both of them powerful but out of place loners in a dangerous place. I also found the plot to be satisfying, and the resolution to the smaller stories presented were much more hopeful and bright than I wanted to assume in the beginning. I definitely think the novella can be a nice taster to the author’s wider world and writing style.
At the same time, like with a lot of shorter and more self-contained stories that connect to series, I found myself wondering about a lot of details that didn’t end up coming up but would have made the experience much more well-rounded. Something I definitely missed was more about Farden himself, his life, his magic and what a Written is, exactly, and his current conundrum that had sent him to Albion which remained very vague. This all would have helped me to be more emotionally involved in his story with the wyrm which seemed to be the main throughline of the novella but it never really got there for me. I was also never entirely clear on the political structure in the part of the world we were discovering, so some topics connected to Durnus also remained vague. And although I got the gist of the Weaver’s character (probably the character with the best-presented personality in the book), I also wished to know more about what he was capable of which would have strengthened the tension and danger.
A short, self-contained fantasy adventure that is easy to breeze through, The Weaver and The Wyrm will be enjoyable to all fantasy lovers who like their magic badass and their worlds grim but still illuminated with a beam of sunshine.
Helyna L. Clove 
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