Review: Sole Sacrifice by K.C. May

Today our twining road will take us down a path to the tragic.

About the Author:

K.C. May was born in Chicago and grew up in the mid-western USA and in Hawaii, attended University of Colorado in Boulder and graduated with a B.A. in Russian from Florida State University. In 1985, she moved to Taiwan to teach English and study Mandarin Chinese. She also lived in the Arizona desert for 24 years, where she founded and ran a non-profit Rottweiler rescue organization, studied Ken-po karate, went backpacking, tried sky-diving, dabbled in bodybuilding, did some downhill skiing, renewed her interest in motorcycling, and spent some time on the shooting range. In 2010, she retreated to cooler, greener Georgia. She earns her living as a full-time writer.

Sole Sacrifice

by K.C. May

Self-published, 2010

66 pages

Kindle price: $0.00

★★★★☆

This is a Kinshield Legacy novella.

Borrowing the words of the author herself: "This is the tragic story of how one character in my novel The Kinshield Legacy became who he is." - May, K. C. (2010-08-25). Sole Sacrifice (a novella) .  . Kindle Edition. 

This character is Sithral Tyr, a loving husband and father from a peaceful clan. Unfortunately a strange sickness has taken over his village and is slowly killing off all the children. The village shaman stands powerless to do anything about it wherefore Tyr decides to take action, driven by his fear of losing his last living son.

It starts tragically with him burrying a dead son. But that is nothing compared to how truly tragical the story should turn out to end.

Sithral Tyr has lived a sheltered life among his own people of the little clan, but his quest for a cure to the sickness takes him into the larger evil-infected world of a big city. He is completely ignorant of their ways and even after he has been cheated several times he keeps naively trusting the people he meet.

I saw another review that claimed the story was naive, but I don't agree with that. They claimed that it was not neccsary to do the things Tyr does to save a child. Of course it is not. Another man could probably have found a better way. But that is not within Tyrs nature, and that is a part of the tragedy of the story. He is a men deeply distressed (he has lost several children already!) and he is completely ignorant of the world; he doesn't know where to go or who to turn to for help, he just follows whatever small traces he can find and incidentally ends up making poor decicions.

He never does completely regret his choices. He said he would do anything for his son and so he did. He knew the immensity of the price he would have to pay for actions, yet he did it anyway. He ruined himself out of love for his son (and out of ignorance of a better way to achieve his goal).

The story is written in a simple, flowing language. I found it to be rather boring and void of any personal character. This is probably the only thing that is holding me back from awarding the story five stars.

In the end let me say this: At first I was indifferent towards the loss of Tyr, then came laughter at his apparent ignorance of the world, but at last came the tears and the desire to pick up The Kinshield Legacy to find out what happens to him after this heartbreaking ending.