General Overview:

Spark of the Divine by Louise Holland is a great example of how to use D&D to inspire and write a good, unique story.

It feels like a Lit-RPG only as far as in the D&D influence is clear (characters fall into classes, use certain weapons typically tied to the class, yet each character does not feel confined to his or her class), but the world is also definitely its own. Holland does a good job separating the magic system from what you know in D&D and making it more her own, more alive in her world. Spark of the Divine has an engaging plot, including a masquerade ball and some romance. Plenty of banter, the characters feel like they know each other well-enough. I can also happily report there are a number of moments where I got to make a note saying, “THAT’S THE NAME OF THE BOOK!” without it feeling like it was cringe.

Plot:

For the plot, imagine you are playing DnD and your party’s Level 12 Druid loses 10 levels after a fight and now you gotta get it back while the rest of you are probably level 7-10. Anyway, the Druid, Mae, is pretty cool and I like her character a lot. Each of the events flows to the next, and I’m happy there was a bit of a time skip to put the pressure on. I also found the final solution to Mae’s loss of power interesting and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes in the next.

I think I summed it up nicely.

Plot is a 9.5/10 (because I don’t like giving 10/10s).

Characters:

The characters are good, but near the beginning there was a set of pages that read like a backstory from a character sheet that probably could have been integrated better across the story. Yes, they fall into archetypes a bit, but they all feel unique.

Grundle makes me laugh, pretty sure he narrates the whole book, just using our grammar for our sake (even if it is Australian English).

Reevan is also funny, but neither his nor Grundle’s existence as “comic relief” feels like that is their only purpose.

The characters are all well-written, but sometimes felt too trope-y.

I still give it a solid 9/10.

Writing:

The writing was generally good and consistently so (especially for an Australian). There were a couple of moments where I questioned word choice and sentence structure, but the average reader will not be likely to notice such minuscule, insignificant things. I am picky, not necessarily right.

Everything flows from one point to the next nicely and the shifts between characters are solid and make sense. The relationships between the characters feel justified and realistic to their world. When a confession is made near the end of the book, I got all giddy. It was a well-written scene.

If you read the sample (which is lengthy… good), you’ll know if you like Holland’s writing style.

But as I said, a few disagreements on diction and grammar (beyond the American/Australian split), 9/10.

Final Rating: 9.2/10

Great job, Louise! Glad to know Grundle narrates the whole book.

Louise Holland is another member of the “Break-ins,” see my other posts on Pathlighter and The Rest to the Gods for more from the group.