Review: For A Few Days More by Z.B. Steele

Blurb:

The Hinterlands are a lawless place of broken dreams and broken people.

Roth is a bodyguard trying to leave his dark past behind, but history has a way of turning back up. Cynthia is a bandit who's trying to make a future by wading through blood. They travel separately, trying to live by their own codes. All while a man in a red cloak tracks their blood-soaked footprints.

Review:

Slowly, over the past few months, I’ve read most of what the SFF Insider authors have out right now. This one is but the latest on that list, with more to be read later. When I asked Steele for an ebook copy, I was on vacation, and the next day was planned out for a trip to the capitol of Texas. Once I had the copy, I loaded it up on my iPad and started reading it in the vehicle on the way there. And then the vacation continued. It’s been about two weeks now, and I’m dealing with jetlag, but still, I remember “For A Few Days More”. Probably due to the death count within the novel. Probably.

If I had to sum up the main idea of the book and try to get someone to read it, I’d say this:

“A justice hunter tracks down dangerous foes for sport. A dead man walking wishing to begin anew. A greedy, ruthless outlaw heads east. Care to know more?”

However, that’s just the half of it. Maybe even less than half of it. Motivation, general plot, and the lore of the world are all missing from that blurb, so I’ll attempt to fill that in as best I can.

First off, we have the characters. The unnamed justice hunter. Cynthia. Roth. All three of them are uncorrelated with each other, yet they are connected all the same. The unnamed justice hunter wants a challenge, and out of pure fun, looks for the most dangerous bands to go after in hopes of a worthy opponent. All the while, he still dreams of facing down the mysterious Declan, the once leader of a bandit legion called “The Gravewalkers”. Cynthia wants to lead her own band of brigands, and isn’t willing to let anyone get in the way of that, even close acquaintances. And then there's' Roth. Roth is a man looking for atonement due to his past life, which he keeps close to his chest. All he has is a dark red blade and enough strength to kill a man with one punch.

After that, we have the world building. Nothing too off the rails. We have no map to look at yet we still get a grounded enough sense of where Cynthia, the red cloaked lunatic and Roth are.

There is magic, but it is more in the sense of berserker rage and, well, the red cloaked lunatic.

I really enjoyed the fact that all of the characters travelled in a general sense towards the north, giving us readers a glimpse of all the landscapes a land could have… besides the ocean. 

Finally, there’s the plot of “For A Few Days More”. There’s three plot lines that reconvene at the end, all the while never really intersecting and other times are spaced out far enough that it doesn’t seem so jarring. Cynthia is off going east, Roth is going northish, and the red cloaked man is going… somewhere. With lots of blood and stabbing, shenanigans happen and the end is fulfilling enough, letting us readers imagine the story further.

If I had to critique anything about the novel, I’d have to say that some parts felt too convenient. A bit too convenient. Sure, the world is large, the continent is big, and they could all be around there, but the fact that all the characters end up in the same village by the end of it sounds like too much of a stretch. It could happen, but the statistics are too low for that. However, that’s just my mind going after coincidences and everyone will probably perceive it differently.

If you like off the absolute rails characters, slashing and stabbing, and a somewhat happy end to those aforementioned characters, this one’s for you.

As always, thank you for reading this review, and I hope I’ve helped nudge you towards your next read. If not, don’t worry, we here at SFF Insiders have reviews for books that are both within the fantasy murderhobo genre and in others. 

Wherever you are reading this review, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night!